


creature of habit

by apollo (diurno), diurno



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Andrew Minyard Has Feelings, Character Study, Domestic Bliss, Fix-It, Fluff, Found Family, Healing, Introspection, Kinda?, Literary References & Allusions, M/M, Memories, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Nonverbal Communication, Platonic Relationships, Post-Canon, Therapy, canon was awful so this is my poor attempt at fixing it, i don't know man... admittedly this is just very sweet, lol kinda, this is a tag ietjgwoj
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:01:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 38,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25564021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diurno/pseuds/apollo, https://archiveofourown.org/users/diurno/pseuds/diurno
Summary: This place will never, ever, get better and things will never be alright.But —but.Andrew hates himself for the but. The last time he had anything aside from his own spine to hold himself up, Andrew had ran his body raggedy trying to keep it. He doesn’t know at which point he became a creature of habit; he doesn’t know why he’d put himself through this again. He doesn’t know why he’d handle Neil the knife and tell him just where to cut, but he did and he has and he will continue to do so until it kills him or Andrew kills it first.Alternatively: The Foxes in hindsight, through Andrew's perspective.
Relationships: Andrew Minyard & The Foxes, Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard
Comments: 15
Kudos: 117





	1. i.

**Author's Note:**

> this is a fix-it fic but im not fixing anything that happened in canon im just writing over the racist&homophobic tropes nicky was exposed to
> 
> tw for canon-typical discussions (sexual assault, death, overdoses, such and such) but nothing too graphic or heavy. it's mostly about -- you know, healing. i thought we could all use a bit of hopeful thoughts these days

_“We keep / telling the other, I love you / and I love you, and we do, / though we both know / where the knives are.”_

**— Laura Van Prooyen, “This Child”.**

**i.**

Anyone that knew Andrew, knew by proxy that he would never flinch in the face of raw, unfiltered violence.

A handful of years scattered around in shady households and juvenile incarceration had made him fall into the quiet, cotton-empty habit of indifference, and much that has died inside of him will never come back, though he is not particularly partial to the graveyard methods he picked up over the last two decades. Perpetually boring as life is, he supposes there’s no point in mourning something that was never his to begin with — since Andrew never had any expectations in the first place, it’s quite foolish to believe he should ever assume a grieving position. Impotence is both liberating and imprisoning; it has given him the means to survive, but did not allow him to live, and it’s been years since it has ever mattered.

That doesn’t mean the occasional flicker of curiosity isn’t there, still as a rock and twice as relentless. From under the layers and layers of detachment, something is due to bubble up every once in a while, if only out of pure cynicism. Andrew would smother it away had he the chance, but it has never posed itself as a bother; in the overwhelmingly vast darkness, a small tealight shaped dot is rarely ever a threat. If anything, it’s an inconvenience. The quicker he gets his answer, the quicker the faint itch of a question go away. It’s an irrefutable truth.

Well — not quite irrefutable. Not perfectly, at least. Though Andrew has been assessing and prodding at his thoughts with the same cold apathy for years, there are still doubts that do not unravel from introspection alone. If he wanted real, tangible answers for them, he had to ask, and that’s too much effort. To even want at all is too much effort, and it should drive him away from his curiosity like wolves from a fire, though it hasn’t and it doesn’t. Though, and despite everything, Nicholas Hemmick remains as much of a question mark as he has always been.

Josten, Day, Walker — these are people he understands. Jagged ends and sharp bones, stony faces with nothing but white noise behind them, lips frowned downwards and nothing more than a few comforting words to give out, if that. These are people Andrew can see eye to eye with, be it through their past or through their future. These are people Andrew knows — these are people Andrew can keep around, because he knows well enough that they would go if he so desired them to. These are people that know no hope, and thus rub on him only faint outbursts of feeling he can take and fold to himself easily, without the expectation to react to them at the moment they are known.

But Nicholas is on a league of his own. From an objective point of view, and through unbiased, untinted eyes, none of his actions seem to make any sense. Andrew could argue they come from the warmth of his heart and whatnot, but that’s not something he believes in anymore — since Nicholas burns and Andrew runs cold, trying to conceive his cousin’s actions through anything other than his eyes is counterproductive. Andrew would never understand him, so why try?

If he asked, he knew he’d get an answer. Nicholas has never been anything short of a chatterbox, and his voice thunders through the wall like a cacophonic orchestra Andrew had never wished to buy a ticket to, and then again — it’s too much effort. To even ask at all would imply that Andrew thinks about it more than once or twice in passage, and he’d rather not know what that would entail for Nicholas’ perspective of him. If anything, whatever it is that Nicholas sees in him is exactly what Andrew is not, because examining him through hopeful shades is just like examining the stock market through a squirrels’ eyes; it makes no sense. It’s inconceivable.

Still, Andrew watches in hope of finding a clue. From the other side of the room, Nicholas is — not unkindly — disappointed in Neil’s lack of a decent Spanish pronunciation, the soft puffs of air coming from his nose loud enough to fill up the entirety of Fox Tower. He tells Neil something Andrew can’t quite grasp and can’t quite bring himself to care, then seamlessly disappears into a rapid, comfortable string of Spanish words, curling around his tongue in familiarity. Neil, with ridiculously blue eyes staring back, seems so lost in his inability to pick up whatever Nicky’s saying that he doesn’t even bother to switch to Spanish as he declares: “I didn’t understand even one word that just came out of your mouth.”

Nicholas’ smile falters slightly, but Andrew sees through it easily enough to know just when he’ll plaster it on again. “You’re not trying hard enough,” he gently reprimands. Straddling one of the desk chairs, he almost entirely covers Neil’s scrawny frame from the quiet morning light, a Nicky-shaped shadow casting all over his features and making them slightly darker than usual. It’s in that darkness Andrew finds himself — not in Nicky’s practiced ease, the affectionate tone of his words almost deafening to untrained ears. Andrew wants to hate him for such undeserved optimism, but doesn’t find the will to do it. “If you want to learn Spanish, you gotta learn how to pick up on dialect. You’ll never fully understand it if you don’t acknowledge its nuance.”

Neil huffs, frustrated. Andrew also knows just when he’ll say something mouthy, because Josten is that predictable. “This is so stupid. I don’t need to understand _nuance_ , I need it to pass my test then never use it again.”

“You never know when you’ll need to speak Spanish,” Nicky argues back, leaning his chin over his folded forearms and vaguely making a point. “Plus — wouldn’t it be cool to have a language that only the two of us speak? Aaron and Andrew know German. We could gossip without anyone knowing. You could tell me all about your,” he clears his throat, indiscreetly looking at Andrew from the corner of his eye. Andrew almost stares back, willing to pick that fight, but eventually decides against it as he settles back into the beanbag chair, a book propped over his face. “ _Casi novio_ without embarrassing yourself in front of other people.”

Andrew doesn’t need to look to know the next loud noise is the sound of Neil’s sneakers thumping against the floor in both displeasance and stubbornness. That’s two loud noises in a row, he distantly notices — Kevin will wake up soon, and he’ll be unsurprisingly sour. “There is no _casi novio._ There is no _novio_ at all. Uh uh, don’t argue with me on this. You’ll lose.”

“Fine. _Tu persona especial,_ then. _Tu pasión, tu coqueteo, tu hombre._ Whatever you want to call it.”

He doesn’t know what any of these words mean, but judging by Neil’s loud, frustrated groan, they can only be referring to him. A stubborn part of Andrew is briefly pleased by it, and he doesn’t quite have the time to stomp it away — it comes and goes so quickly, he’s left wondering where it came from. Neil closes his Spanish book with a loud bang, grumpily murmuring a few Spanish words Andrew doesn’t understand, and Nicky seems pleased enough to give him a curt chuckle in return. The interaction would’ve made him weary any other time of the day, as Andrew doesn’t particularly enjoy not picking up on conversations, but he trusts Neil to fight his own battles. At the end, it’s not his business to deal with, and he’s more than willing to drown out their bickering.

Andrew ends up dozing off slightly, conscience fighting against the drenched sunbeams on his back and losing. He’s out for a few heartbeats, mouth pressed in a tight line, but the sound of shuffling from the room is enough to make him peek blearily at Kevin’s displeased figure, now standing by the doorway with a blanket over his shoulders and a well known scowl. Andrew thinks he looks pathetic, but it’s not his place to point it out — mostly, Kevin’s disappointment means nothing to him. He glares at Neil and Nicky for a second, eyebrows furrowed and jaw set tight, then searches for Andrew’s gaze as if prodding him to do something about it.

He glares back, nonplussed. Kevin’s head of tight dark curls is flattened in the side he slept on, the rest poking out in weird shapes, and Andrew vaguely acknowledges that he’ll need a haircut soon. Nicky offered to cut it for him when he first signed with the Foxes, claiming his knowledge on curly hair was extensive enough from cutting both Andrew’s and Aaron’s hairs when they were teenagers, but Kevin had dismissed it then, clearly unimpressed by a pauper’s hair cutting skills. Andrew remembers wanting to punch him for such an arrogant dismissal, and wonders what his answer would be if Nicky offered it again. Even more distantly, he wonders what would his _own_ answer be if Nicky offered to cut his hair again. Andrew’s been due to a haircut for the past month.

Eventually, Kevin gets tired of their stare contest, dropping his hands to his sides like an angry kitten. He opens his mouth to complain, but Andrew beats him to it in a nonchalant order: “Go back to sleep, Kevin. It’s too early in the morning to be a nuisance.”

He feels all eyes turn to the sound of his voice, but doesn’t acknowledge them. Instead, he boredly glares back at Kevin, who looks like he’d choke the life out of Andrew if he weren’t so scared of actually doing it. At last, he stomps his feet on the ground quite as if he couldn’t believe himself to _still_ be following Andrew’s orders, and slides back into the bedroom before slamming the door behind him. Neil’s eyes linger on Andrew a second more before he returns to his Spanish lesson, and Nicky murmurs ‘ _casi novio’_ under his breath.

That sharp prickle of memory doesn’t leave Andrew for the rest of the day. He recalls it all perfectly — the sound of Nicky’s blunt scissors clicking, the hesitant way his hand curled around Andrew’s shoulder to keep him in place, the tuffs of dirty blonde hair falling to the ground. It wasn’t necessarily bad and it wasn’t necessarily good; Andrew tolerated it out of necessity, given it would be much worse if he were at the mercy of a stranger instead. Even then, as a somewhat ditzy eighteen year old, Nicholas hadn’t asked him to see a hairdresser; maybe he knew then that Andrew would never trust a stranger to come near him with a sharp object in their hand, or maybe he was stupid enough to believe Andrew would mind that the haircut would be cheap, as it was all he could afford at the time. Regardless, Nicky did his job efficient and quietly; Andrew remembers it being so quick so easy he could barely count the seconds as Nicholas worked his way from his nape to his fringe, humming under his breath when he needed Andrew to turn his head to the side.

They stopped doing it once Andrew realized the careful way Nicky maneuvered himself around his chair reminded him too much of Cass for it to do any good, and he remembers Nicholas’ almost disappointed face as he pulled away from their monthly haircut, doing it on his own instead. Andrew is quietly wondering if he’d ever allow it to happen again — even if only to see if there’s any feeling left for Cass in his chest at all — when Neil appears in front of the goal with a toothy grin and drenched in sweat, clacking his racket against Andrew’s enthusiastically as he steps closer.

“What are you thinking about?” He asks cheerfully, grinning from ear to ear. Andrew hasn’t paid much attention to the scrimmage to know what got him in such a good mood, but he doesn’t have to — Kevin walks past them with a scowl not much longer, stomping away to presumably get more cones. “You’ve been spacing out the whole day. The others are betting whether you’re high or not.”

Andrew considers him for a second, but when Neil is this wired about Exy it’s impossible to pay attention to him for too long. He motions dismissively. “Go shower. You look repulsive.”

Neil chuckles. “So now I look repulsive. I thought you said my one good quality was being good looking.”

“Not at all.” He shakes his head in one simple motion. “There is no good quality to you.”

“Sure, sure,” Neil hums, infuriatingly full of himself. Andrew should probably put him back in his place, but today is not the day to engage in mindless conversation. With the violent surge of memories that swallows him down, what Andrew needs least is to be around Neil’s admittedly confusing presence. “But still — what are you thinking about? On credit.”

 _On credit_. They had discussed Neil’s life on the run a little bit more last night — nothing of substance, but these were still secrets, Andrew supposes. He fights the urge to scoff, and schools his face into undefeated nonchalance once more. “I don’t have to tell you right now.”

Realistically speaking, Andrew doesn’t have to tell him at all. If he said he didn’t want to talk about it, Neil would drop it forevermore; in the blink of an eye, even, but Andrew is past the time where he thought he wanted to hide anything from Neil. This isn’t a particularly heavy topic either — they hadn’t gone over the nitty gritty details of Andrew’s psyche yet, but nothing would pale at a simple, harmless memory of Nicky cutting his hair. That is not exactly what’s bothering him, but he supposes a half truth is still better than evasion. When Neil only stares at him, Andrew says, just to be difficult: “It’s none of your business.”

“It’s not,” Neil agrees. “But since _you_ are my business, it becomes my business by proxy.”

“I am not your business,” he says. A half hearted lie, at best.

Neil raises an eyebrow. “You are all of my business.”

“Exy is your business.” Andrew forcefully peels Neil’s gaze away, forcing him to stare back at the court by cradling his chin and moving it towards the rest of the Foxes. “Take care of it. Children should be seen and not heard.”

With his face entirely squished by Andrew’s grip, Neil has half the mind to roll his eyes. His voice comes out funny-sounding as he says: “Your one man war on Exy is still ongoing? It’s about to be summertime and you’re still this spiteful.”

Andrew squeezes his face even harder, but not enough to hurt — never enough to hurt. “I thought you went through all of last year’s bullshit to play Exy, so why aren’t you playing Exy, exactly?”

“Because you haven’t told me what you’re thinking about yet.” Neil smirks at him like he just dropped the comeback of the century, all teeth and scrunched noses. He’s been eating well enough lately that his cheeks can somewhat squish under Andrew’s fingertips, but he’s still too skinny to pick up any heavier weights at the gym. Andrew heard all about it — it’s one of Kevin’s biggest complaints about Neil. “It’s okay if you don’t want to tell me, but I’d rather hear no than an evasion.”

Andrew studies him quietly for a second. “I don’t care about what you’d rather hear,” he hums out, but averts his eyes from Neil all the same. “It’s nothing. I just got reminded of something when you and Nicky were studying Spanish this morning.”

Neil nods, taking Andrew’s hand up and down with him. “A bad something or a good something?”

 _A good something._ Andrew almost wants to laugh. “Neither,” he answers simply and at last. When Neil opens his mouth to ask another question, he beats him to it: “It reminded me of when Nicky used to cut my hair in high school. Are you satisfied? You better be, because if you ask again I’m not making an effort for the next three games, and to hell your and Kevin’s second championship.”

Neil studies him for a moment, looking his fill, and eventually nods again, this time in contempt. Andrew wants to remind him that his approval means nothing, that he shouldn’t look satisfied because Andrew did not care enough to try and satisfy him, but he’s grown too tired for lying. He lets his hand fall from Neil’s face almost meekly, exhaustion settling somewhere in his bones Andrew could never quite reach, and walked back into the goal to lean against his racquet. For years his teammates had guessed Andrew’s apathy came from a neurologic imbalance, but Neil knows better than that — he knows that, on off days, it comes back to being too tired, too underwhelmed to even breathe. He felt like a slowed down heartbeat, ready for death but not there yet, and said nothing else; he didn’t have it in himself to do so.

After a moment of silence, Neil turns to him once more, narrow shoulders creating a physical barrier between where Andrew was standing and the rest of the team. He was trying to be protective, Andrew noticed, but it didn’t quite work — the image of a man with his chest puffed out in front of him could only make him angry. “Do you want to leave practice? I can get Coach to dismiss you.”

Andrew shakes his hand dismissively. “Go back to Exy,” he repeated himself, and this time Neil didn’t argue.

He watched the rest of the Foxes play with clear disinterest, miles away from their frivolous animosity. Andrew didn’t care enough to know his teammates, back in high school, and he wouldn’t have known the Foxes’ names if it weren’t for Renee. Even now, as he tries to make out the face of the original Foxes, back when he met them as a Freshman, Andrew couldn’t get them right; not because he forgot, but because he never cared enough to learn in the first place. The only few who stuck with him were the ones Neil so desperately clings to nowadays — Danielle, Allison, Matthew, Renee — _Natalie_. Kevin was an unexpected addition, and next year they’ll have three Freshmen to take in.

These are things he doesn’t care about, not particularly, but they’re truths he can pick apart and analyze as a mean to pass time. A truth: Two Foxes died in a car crash before Andrew joined the lineup. Another truth: Seth overdosed, and it was, — partially —, Neil’s fault. Another, not-so-impartial truth: Neil would’ve died before Spring Championships. A guess: Andrew wouldn’t have survived it long enough to attend his funeral. That’s how he disconnects; the truth, bare and unfiltered, is a great way to pass time. It takes no roundabouts and delivers as promised, sharp like a razor and twice as lethal. Andrew did not like many things, but he liked truth.

He eventually ends up by the sidelines, knees pulled to his chest and his chin leaning over, eyeing the team lazily. The upperclassmen have taken an odd liking to him, manifested out of Neil’s incredible stubbornness or Renee’s kind approaches, and Andrew could tolerate them well enough on a good day. Matt was a misplaced exception Andrew was still trying to make sense out of, but it’s no surprise that he was a bit less neutral about him as he was about the other Foxes when he first stepped into Palmetto — after all, Andrew did go through surprising lengths to keep him sober, even if for Aaron’s sake. He wonders if he’d ever do it again, and the phantom ache that strikes through him is enough to push that thought away completely; without the mania, very little feels worth the time and struggle.

These days Andrew likes to be still and silent, and to remember things that are not necessarily bad. He wouldn’t go as far as saying the memory of Nicky cutting his hair is good — back then, Andrew couldn’t muster the idea of what _good_ might have looked like, but it didn’t feel like a haunted place for his mind to go to. Betsy had told him as much, anyways; she said good memories would make things easier to navigate through. She said he could build newer, better ones, and rewrite over the past.

He sits as still as possibly, letting his body disarm and relax for a few seconds, and is not bothered any further. If anyone felt anything about his withdrawal from practice, nothing was said; even Kevin seemed smart enough to let it go.

When he snaps back to reality, the court is all empty aside from Wymack, who grumpily picked up leftover cones and gear and threw them all into one small pile near the goal’s plexiglass. His tense shoulders showed him he knew Andrew was there, but he did nothing else to acknowledge his sudden outbreak at conscience, taking what he supposed was Neil’s advice and allowing Andrew to come back to earth on his own terms. He was surprised to see that it worked — when Andrew got up from the bench, still a bit wobbly but present enough to walk, it didn’t feel as bad as previous dissociative episodes had. Andrew would dare to say he felt somewhat lighter; the alone time inside his head was well enjoyed after so many moments of public vulnerability in the last year, pried off of his hands ruthlessly.

Wymack waited for him at the last gate as if he knew Andrew would stop to consider him after a quick shower. They size each other up for a moment, but David is too much of a man to ever pick a fight with Andrew over his mental state. “You’ll have to dissociate in the locker room when the Freshmen arrive,” is what he chooses to say at length, locking the door behind him as they step out in the parking lot.

Andrew nodded. He would have to.

“Josten wanted to wait you out,” Wymack told him, escorting Andrew to the Maserati as if he were afraid Andrew would drive off into a cliff. His words ring true to that guess — bringing up Neil, Andrew supposes, is his way of remembering him that there is still something to live for. “Kevin wanted, too, but had nothing polite to say about it. I think that’s his only way of acknowledging your friendship at all.”

If he had the energy to do it, he would correct Wymack and tell him Kevin is not his friend, but it would only be a half-truth. Instead, Andrew takes the easy way out and easily deflects the conversation into an insult, nevermind Wymack’s bloodbond with Kevin. “Too many balls to the head. He’s become an unpleasant child.”

“Maybe,” David agrees, gruff like he is. He watches Andrew slide into the driver’s seat of the Maserati with almost little to no interest, and motions dismissively when Andrew offers him a raised eyebrow. “Go meet your family. I’m sure they’re calling 911 by now.”

It’s unrealistic at best and of bad taste at worst. Not one single person in Andrew’s lot would consider calling the police if he went missing; he wouldn’t keep them around if they did. Some had their own reasons — Nicholas and Kevin, for one, would never trust a caucasian police officer — and some simply despised them for the things they knew and did nothing about, though Andrew guesses Neil’s hatred for the justice system as a whole said more about him than it did about the world.

An irrefutable truth: No one in his family would ever associate with a police officer. An underlying consideration: Kevin became part of it somewhere between the last time Andrew assessed his family and today.

He takes a few turns around the court as a mean to put out the moment he had to see anyone else again, but eventually pulls off into the driveway, exact ten minutes separating him from the comfort — _ha_ — of home, sweet home. It's already a few minutes past seven by the time Andrew walks into their dormitory, and he unceremoniously walks into another of Kevin and Neil's arguments, though they have the decency to turn down their voices to whispers as Andrew passes them by, looking presumably exhausted enough to have Josten worrying his bottom lip into a bite.

Wordlessly, Andrew beelines for the kitchen and swings the refrigerator door open, grabbing a water bottle and slamming it closed before anyone can ask him anything. He's back into the hallways in a matter of seconds, clutching his car keys tightly in one hand and the bottle on the other, still perfectly screwed shut. The iciness on his palm is enough to keep him at bay, and by the time he's storming into Matthew's, Aaron's and Nicholas' room Andrew has to forcefully let go of the bottle, cold burns starting to form and numb the skin of his hands. It's empty, mostly — the only person standing in their living room is Nicholas, who perches himself over one of the desks with his hair pushed back in an old school hairdo, curls riding off his face and almost long enough to tie them back if he wanted to.

He doesn't acknowledge Andrew's presence, immersed on what seems to be a worksheet, but he knows Nicholas is well aware of him standing in the doorway. Even after so many quarrels, he still gives his back to Andrew freely, as if he knew no harm would be done to him if it could be helped — it's foolish and stupefying at once, but Andrew is too tired to let such emotions bubble up. Instead, he compartmentalizes and files them out for later, where he could assess them in the safety of aloneness.

Not a word is said, but Andrew is not patient enough to wait for Nicky to hum his welcome. He closes the door behind him with a slam, hands heavy, and roams through what he knows are Matthew's cabinets until he finds a polished pair of scissors, so clean they reflected Andrew's dark eyebrows almost perfectly. That must have gotten Nicholas' attention, for sure — Andrew with a sharp weapon is not something anyone in the team is impartial to — but he seems to trust Andrew enough for it to not make him show any reaction other than a curt flinch. Andrew wants to prove him wrong for that only, wants to say relaxing in his presence is stupid and would get Nicholas killed one day, but… _But_. Nowadays there always seems to be a _but._

Curiosity killed the cat but satisfaction brought it back to life, so Nicholas does what he does best and turns to him with a curious glance. "Andrew?" He asks, not quite a call and not quite a question. When he turns to face him completely, Andrew notices Nicholas is still in his Jersey, and the thought makes him vaguely angry — mostly, it means he hasn't gotten any rest ever since the Foxes left practice, about half an hour ago. It's stupid; Nicholas is going to get himself injured.

"Why are you not resting?" He snarls, putting down the keys and the water bottle harshly against Nicholas' desk. That seemed to be the wrong move to make, though, because the effort tires him out to the point of deflection — Andrew feels himself detaching from this anger as quickly as he felt himself gorging on it.

Nicholas raises an eyebrow, but doesn't answer. Instead, he opts for a more obvious question: "What's with the scissors? I have a test tomorrow if you feel like gutting me today. I don't really want to take it, so knock yourself out. Split my will with Erik and Aaron, and, well — I suppose you could give Neil a part of it too."

In silence, Andrew leans down and presses the pair of scissors to Nicholas' palm, resting up against the desk. His cousin inspects it carefully for a second, tracing the outline of the scissors with his free fingertips, and looks up at Andrew as if he were searching for something in his face that told him what he wanted to hear. Andrew holds his gaze, unconcerned, but Nicholas seems to find whatever he wants to find in his face, and leans back, pleased. "It's too long, isn't it? Was it Kevin that kept bugging you to cut it?"

Andrew sets his jaw, but manages to answer: "No."

Nicholas nods in understanding. He gets up from the desk and walks around Andrew as if inspecting his unruly haircut, a respectable distance kept between them. He clicks the scissors absentmindedly, then asks: "Just cutting?'

Andrew thinks about it for a second, then answers: "Yes."

He nods again. "Another yes or no question: Have you eaten yet?"

"No."

"Thought so. There's veggie burgers in the fridge."

That sparks another memory, though a vaguer one at that. They weren't raised vegetarian — Nicholas or Aaron, that is, as Andrew was not raised by anyone —, but they developed a somewhat semi-vegetarian diet by the time Nicholas came back from German to take care of them after Tilda's sudden death. Nicholas continues to cook vegetarian dishes to this day, if only so he could compensate for his other unhealthy practices, but it's been a few years since Andrew last cared about what he ate. He hadn't realized until now how many of Nicholas' practices still manifested themselves in his behavior; Andrew doesn't even remember the last time he had meat.

If Nicky notices his sudden discovery, he doesn't mention it. "I'm going to start now," he announces, and Andrew has the decency to sit down before the desk to make his job easier.

Nicholas works just the same as he always has — quiet and quickly, using his hands to measure the cut and carefully forming curls around his fingers to decide how healthy they are, and if he needs to send Andrew home with a jumbo sized conditioner tube. Hair is just… Hair. Andrew can't think of a reason someone would express so much care over something so simple, but he guesses that is simply the type of person Nicholas is.

He can't fully relax while giving someone his back, but he finds himself spacing out all the same, only the sharp edges of his own tense shoulders anchoring him to earth. It's silent enough to be pleasant — when emptiness fills up the room, all Andrew can hear is the sound of the scissors and the quiet muffle of now dead hair falling to the ground. Some fall to his shoulders, but Nicholas bats them away delicately, such motherly manners making Andrew sick to his stomach.

From somewhere beyond this plane of being, he assesses the situation. A truth: Andrew trusted — even wanted — Nicholas to cut his hair. Another truth: Nicholas used to remind him too much of Cass, hence why Andrew could never stand being around him sober, but the comparison has paled over the years. A guess: Both Nicholas and Andrew don't know what to do with themselves without a domineering, caregiving role. A theory: They'll never fully get along without the other caving in.

It's not because of Cass anymore; Andrew has always been controlling, and Nicholas has always been too scared to allow himself anything short of perfect control. In a way, their attachments to Neil and Aaron make sense — both of them have faced a debilitating lack of motherly figures, and therefore are more prone to eagerly accept care, thus allowing the caretaker to give out effort without needing to show vulnerability back. Andrew is good at standing in the outskirts and having people lean on him — Nicholas may have not chosen it at first, but he took the role and ran with it when he had to. In that sense, they'll never match.

"It's too long in the front," Nicky comments under his breath, his voice sounding distant and muffled from deep within Andrew's conscience. He gingerly pulls one particularly long blond lock, rolling it around his finger. "I think I'll need hair clips, but—"

"But what."

He can almost hear Nicholas' smile. "But they're colorful."

There it is; Nicholas' urge to take care of anyone and anything within arm's reach. Andrew wonders where does he even find the energy to try — he’s sure there should be nothing left after last year’s disastrous streak. After a second of slow consideration, he eventually motions dismissively, allowing Nicholas to do as he pleases. A small, self destructive part of Andrew still desperately wanted to test his reaction to anything Cass-related, and an even smaller part of him has grown too tired to put up an unprompted fight.

Nicholas leaves for a few seconds, then comes back with a small jewelry case on his hands, punched Talavera adorning the top of the object and making the quiet night light bounce off its colors. It’s too colorful; Andrew averts his eyes by nature, though the only other option is staring right into Nicholas, the curves and plans of his face simultaneously foreign and familiar. They never looked anything alike — where Andrew and Aaron are too pale, too sour, too washed out, Nicholas’ skin has always been a warmer shade of brown, features angular and sharp the way Andrew had only seen before in History books. People often showed surprise when they found out they were cousins; Nicky used to joke that his cousins had stayed too little time in the oven. At the time, through his heavy dosage of mania, Andrew thought it was the funniest thing anyone had said about him.

“Can I?” Nicholas asks, holding out a particularly tacky red hair clip in his direction. He has that nervous look in his eye, when he knows he’s being watched and is desperately trying to deflect the attention from himself, and Andrew can’t fully wrap his mind around just how stupid Nicholas is.

At last, he nods, ignoring the sudden spark of anger boiling under his skin. It is so constant and so sharp; Andrew oftentimes can’t tell it apart from attachment. Nicholas works three hair pins into his hair carefully, making sure to not touch him any more than necessary, and mostly Andrew trusts him to be respectful — it’s more than he can give half of the Foxes on a good day. He zones out once more, engulfed in white noise, and lets Nicholas to do his job in silence.

A few minutes pass until he’s finally done, but Nicholas stares at him for a heartbeat longer, huge brown eyes curling around their edges like the infinite core of the universe, both malleable and untouchable. Andrew stares back, daring him to say something, and to his surprise, Nicholas does. “You look very beautiful.”

He never stops trying, Andrew vaguely notices. He’ll have to learn to live with it; Nicholas is not changing his misplaced tenderness anytime soon. When Andrew only stares blankly, Nicky completes, in Spanish: “ _Te quiero, primo, más de lo que sabes."_

“I don’t know what that means.”

Nicholas nods. “I know.”

Andrew nods, too, and wordlessly pulls out the hair clips. He doesn’t say anything else to Nicky, but accepts the veggie burgers on his way out. Small victories, he supposes.

**ii.**

It’s too early in the day when Renee slides into the cafeteria seat before him, her hair now long enough to touch the tabletop without real effort and her raven roots blending in with the bleached platinum. Andrew doesn’t acknowledge her presence. Instead, he turns his attention towards his plate completely, smashing his boiled potatoes into bite-sized pieces as if they were the most important thing in the world at that moment.

“Andrew,” she hums in greeting, infuriatingly pleased to see him. Andrew is forever tempted to wash out that familiarity from her face, but he knows he’d lose that fight — whatever horrors he had lived through, Renee knew and saw worse. “I’m happy to see you out of bed before three,” she comments, not unkindly.

“Walker,” he acknowledges, throwing the potato around his tray with only half the mind to offer her a curt nod.“Is there anything you need?”

Renee shakes her head, visibly endeared. “No, but I like that you asked.”

Andrew blankly stares at her. “Will make sure to not repeat that mistake.”

“Will you swing by my dorm later?” She asks, nonplussed by Andrew’s characteristic rudeness. “I kindly ask you to leave your shoes at the door this time, though.”

He offers to her what he offers others the most: An evasion. “Why?” Andrew asks, tone flat. “If I leave my shoes at the door your roommates might mistake me as someone who wants to stay.”

Renee glares for a millisecond before falling into her usual gentle features. “It’s like you’ve never been to an Asian household before,” she delicately points out.

“I haven’t,” he reminds her. _Neither have you,_ Andrew keeps himself from saying. Renee’s biological parents were as much of a ghost as his own. Two years back, Andrew might’ve brought that up to test Renee’s limits and watch her calm crumble little by little, though he stopped taking those jabs at her a long time ago. “What time?” Andrew asks, avoiding the surge of grossly poured anxiety that comes from acknowledging his lack of will to do harm. This is never a safe road to travel; it leaves you vulnerable.

She smiles. “After you’re done with practice? I want to give you something; a gift.”

“You know I don’t like surprises,” Andrew silently reprimands, but reminds himself to show up all the same. In the end, it’s usually like this — Renee talks, Andrew listens.

“You’ll like this one.”

He raises an eyebrow. “I doubt it.”

“Come and see it for yourself,” Renee challenges, her voice still dainty enough to cram inside the finest china. “I’ll be counting on you.”

Andrew motions dismissively at her, turning his attention back to eating once again. She observes him carefully, still there despite his clear dismissal, and leans forward slow enough for Andrew to track her movements. “Andrew,” Renee insists.

He fights the urge to snap at her. “Yes, Renee ‘Natalie’ Walker?”

“Can I pat your head goodbye? Yes or no?”

That gets his attention. It’s the second time in a week the Foxes have adopted Neil’s habit of asking yes or no questions before touching him, and Andrew — well, Andrew is not particularly pleased about the way they seem to believe they’ve figured him out, but to point them out on it would be to acknowledge their effort, and he lives to be difficult. Instead, he answers: “Quickly. I’ll twist your arm if you take too long.”

An empty threat. Renee would have him on a headlock before he even moved. Regardless, she smiles and reaches out to pat him on the top of his head, the touch of her palm so quick so light Andrew couldn’t even believe she asked him to do it in the first place. “Goodbye, Andrew. I’ll see you later.”

He vaguely shoos her off. Renee walks out with a quiet laugh to her otherwise unconcerned characteristics, and Andrew returns to his one man war on his boiled potatoes with a perpetually bored scowl.

Later on, when rain is pouring all over Palmetto State University and Andrew is vaguely reminded of his first time in Renee’s room — years back on the road —, Allison allows him in with a suspicious frown of her own, long hair pulled into a sad excuse of a bun and eyebrows accusingly furrowed, as if his presence could not mean any good at all. Things being what they are, Andrew and Allison maintain a strange not-relationship of mutual distrust, though it doesn’t necessarily translate to displeasance most of the time. She hasn’t bothered him anymore than the other Foxes have in the past, and she doesn’t waver in her clear dislike of his attitude, and that’s what Andrew respects in her. Oddly enough, Allison would be his first choice of a companion if his family weren’t eligible for the pick; he is more pleased with her indifference than not.

“Monster.” She nods in lieu of hello, using her elbow to slam the door closed behind him as Andrew doesn’t acknowledge her presence with anything of more substance than a glance. “Very rude. Renee’s in the bedroom. Where’s Neil?”

“I am not his keeper, last I checked.”

Allison glares from where she made herself comfortable in the couch with a few magazines and a cocktail. “You _are_ his keeper. I’m surprised he hasn’t transferred his legal custody to you yet, like we were sure Kevin did at some point.”

“That makes no sense,” Andrew limits himself to answering, beelining for the bedroom door. He knocks on the door thrice, curt and quiet. Andrew could’ve bursted in, as Renee surely wouldn't complain about it, but neither of them would enjoy such a privacy outbreak.

Renee opens the door shortly after, her then-blonde now-dark hair still damp from the shower. With a toothy grin, she stands between Andrew and her bedroom like she was egging him on commenting on the sudden change, her track shorts leaving out plenty of bruised skin that surely enough mirror his own — bastard game on the field aside, the goal of a Exy match is not a kind place to be.

“Black,” he says, simply, observing the unfamiliar outline of black hair hug her narrow shoulders and neck.

Renee nods. “Thought it was due for a change. I shouldn’t get attached to a sense of self for too long.”

Andrew considers her for a second, then answers: “Not a slave to any thought, form or behavior.”

“Something of the sort,” she agrees easily, taking a step aside to allow him into her room. He walks in with a blank stare, keeping his eyes and hands to himself, but eventually settles on the edge of the bed he assumed was Renee’s based on the Bible resting atop of the flowery pillowcase.

She grins again. It’s haunting, to see Renee with anything other than short, lightly colored hair, but Andrew has no place to berate her about it. Instead, he asks: “Why am I here, Renee Natalie?”

“I told you, I have a gift.” Renee leaves the door ajar behind her, whether because she didn’t mind Allison overhearing or because she didn’t want to make Andrew feel trapped, he didn’t know. She settles beside him on her bed, leaving a considerable amount of space between them, and reaches under her pillow for a round, colorful gadget being held up by a dangly chain.

Andrew blinks at her in something akin to surprise, but not quite. “A Tamagotchi.”

Renee has the decency to look bashful, but holds his gaze like she usually would nonetheless. “Since you don’t have to take care of Kevin anymore, I thought you’d be better off with a new pet.”

He extends his palm in silent expectation, and Renee drops the toy on his hand carefully, watching him with a curious glint to her eyes. Andrew examines it for a second before bringing his attention back to her. “You've grown senseless, Walker.”

Renee smiles. “Do you like it?”

Andrew takes another look at it, then decides: “It’s frivolous. And tolerable, at best.”

“You’re not saying no.”

“I’m not saying yes.”

“Will you keep it, at least?” She raises a playful eyebrow, bringing her knee to her chest so she could lean her chin over it.

He thinks about it for a second. It would not do any harm, but he’d get bored of it soon enough. Andrew figures he could give the toy to Neil when the time comes; as easily entertainable as he is, a Tamagotchi might be the perfect company. “I’ll keep it,” Andrew decides at last.

Renee nods, pleased. “Thank you.”

She watches with great amusement as Andrew turns it on, the gadget chirping cheerfully as a circle-shaped creature stares back at him in outdated calculator graphics. Momentaneously interested, Andrew presses one of the arrows on the side a few times with the pad of his thumb, feeding the virtual pet. When his eyes go back to Renee, she looks as if she has never seen Andrew in her life before — positively so. “I’m going to let it die,” he says, if only to know how she’d react.

It doesn’t bother Renee at all. “I know. You can ask Neil to take care of it when you’re in class, though. Or carry it around.”

“Bee’s going to find this hilarious,” he changes subjects, commenting offhandedly. Andrew presses on the button once more, watching poor animations indicate the undefined creature has been fed enough for the time being. “Kevin will hate it. He’s going to hammer it to pieces if I let it distract me from Exy.”

“Maybe,” Renee hums. “He’s going to have to compete for your attention for the first time in a year or so.”

Andrew raises an eyebrow. “Now that’s unreciprocated.”

“Is it, though?” She questions, not unkindly.

He doesn’t answer. Instead, he asks a question of his own: “Where did you get this?”

Renee grins. “A thrift store. I bought two.”

“The other one?” Andrew looks at her from the corner of his eye, mindlessly fidgeting with the Tamagotchi.

“Allison.”

“Allison?”

This time, she doesn’t smile. Andrew hears it in her silence — _Allison,_ a name. Allison, a person. Allison, someone Renee loves.

An irrefutable truth: Renee would never have fully trusted him if he were a straight man, being a survivor of sexual abuse herself. Another irrefutable truth: Andrew has never seen her show honest romantic interest in a man before. A theory: Either she’s been too good at hiding it, or he hasn’t paid enough attention.

Then, a memory — Renee mentioning the Trojans’ goalkeeper, Laila, as one of the best looking players in NCAA Exy. Another one — Allison offhandedly suggesting Renee would look good with black hair in a crowded diner. A final recollection: Renee assuring Nicholas she would never judge him — or anyone else — based on their sexuality, for love is beautiful regardless of who holds the knife.

“Allison?” He asks again. Not a question about her sexuality; that much she knows he already figured out. It’s a serious concern for her taste in women, and a friendly attempt at banter Andrew from a year ago never thought he’d initiate.

Renee breaks into a reserved smile. “I’m taller.”

 _I’m taller._ It’s a short sentence, but Andrew understands what hasn’t been explicitly said _._ He nods. “I trust you to kill her if she oversteps the line.”

“As I trust you to kill Neil if he oversteps the line.”

It’s not a jab. It’s a reminder; love gives no escape exits. Andrew considers her words for a second before eventually shrugging. “I wouldn’t say it’s off the table.”

She laughs. He can almost make out the outline of something in his chest — a quick, smoke sign that looks a little bit like attachment and a little bit like endearment. Andrew smothers it away ruthlessly.

**iii.**

“Are you going to jump?” Andrew asks as Allison storms into the roof of Fox Tower with clicking high heels and gritted white teeth, perfectly manicured nails tapping against the ledge as if she wanted the four story fall to be as quick as she was impatient. “Do a backflip.”

She glares at him from where he’s sat, a cigarette in one hand and one of Kevin’s leftover bottles of vodka in the other. “You are an awful human being.”

He takes a drag from his stick, blowing the smoke in her direction. “That is news to no one.”

Despite her presumable best judgement, Allison moves closer. It’s not much — when she crouches down to snatch the bottle from his hands, she makes sure to return to a safe distance afterwhile, almost as if she expected Andrew to try and fight her for the last few sips of cheap vodka. He doesn’t; he wonders if he would, a year ago. Probably.

They sit in silence. It’s cold in the roof, wind working itself through the atmosphere mercilessly, but Andrew has gotten used to it after one too many nights sitting on this very spot with little to no thoughts, like a blood-sniffling shark. By the time he came back from Easthaven and mania was no longer a suitable company, he started occupying his time with wondering how fast he’d have to fall from the roof for it to be a quick, almost painless death. It wasn’t idealization — Andrew would never jump, because it would be too big of a mess and too much of an effort. It was curiosity.

The Fox Tower is forty feet tall; around twelve meters. He did the math a few months ago: If Andrew were to jump, he’d fall in the speed of approximately twenty-nine miles per second until he hit the ground. If he wanted a better shot at surviving, it’d be best if he landed on his side. Still, any fall from a distance greater than thirty feet would result in either death or serious, life threatening injuries, things like blunt chest trauma and rib fractures — many of which Neil would be extremely upset about. Fifty percent of patients who drop from forty feet roofs don’t make it alive, he read once. Four storey buildings are the median lethal distance for falls.

At best case scenario, Andrew would survive with a broken spine. That would be big enough of an injury to excuse him from Exy forever, and Kevin would be deeply inconvenienced by it. The thought almost makes him bite down a sad excuse of a chuckle.

“I don’t mean it,” Allison abruptly says. It’s so sudden and so quiet, even Andrew feels compelled to look her way, though her face is turned to the nighttime sky completely, enveloped by shadows.

He stares blankly at her. She continues: "I don't mean that you're an awful human being. I don't think you are."

“Oh.” Andrew takes another drag of his cigarette, not particularly concerned about Allison’s thoughts on his morality. Out of habit, he offers it to her as he would to Neil, and to Andrew’s surprise she accepts it.

Allison must have taken it as a signal to keep talking, because the next thing she says has him clutching at the end of his indifference a little bit looser, though not for comfort. “He’d be twenty-three today.”

An irrefutable truth: Seth Gordon is dead. Another one: Neil was to blame, but he was not at fault. There’s a difference. “I didn’t like Seth,” Andrew tells her matter-of-factly, because he has nothing else to say.

She blows smoke out into the night. These days, Andrew’s not trying to harm himself any more than the usual, so he turns his face away from it. “I know,” Allison eventually answers, in stone cold apathy. He wonders if she learned it from the years and years of media coverage, or if Allison has more in common with him than he thought she did. “I guess I didn’t really like him all the time, either. He could be an asshole when he wanted to.”

Andrew takes that easy truth and rewards her with another: “I’ve always wondered if you wished it had been Neil instead.”

Allison looks at him from the corner of her eye, most likely assessing his reaction. When she seems pleased with what she finds, she hums in agreement. “At some point, but not anymore. Do _you_ wish it had been Neil instead?”

“At some point, but not anymore,” he echoes her response.

She nods in understanding. Andrew realizes she stripped him of both his drink and his cigarette, like Neil would do — so that’s another on their list of similarities, along with being mouthy and not knowing when to stop.

“You could’ve been a little nicer to him in the past, though,” Allison lets it slide after a long stretch of silence. It’s not an accusation and it’s not a request; her voice is as blank as her painted features, as if she weren’t talking to Andrew as much as she was talking to herself.

Andrew reaches for the bottle of vodka, gripping around its neck and swallowing down the last few swigs before answering, in a flat tone: “Being nice to certain people is inherently cruel to others.”

He thinks of Seth and his loud mouthed slurs, then; the way Nicholas would grimace at the sound of them, making himself as small as one possibly could, and Andrew’s white anger when the word ringed his ears true and ruthless. Seth was dead, yes — that didn’t make him any less of an asshole.

“I get it, you know,” Allison changes the subject, crumbling the burnt out cigarette under her fingertips as if she wanted to twist someone’s neck instead. She waits a few moments before elaborating. “You and Neil. No one else does, but I get it. It’s like when those fucked up, deformed stray cats stick together on the streets. Or when homeless people don’t let go of their scrawny dogs even when they’re dying.”

It’s a rude way to put it. She’s not wrong. “You and Renee,” Andrew answers briefly, not bothering to continue his sentence but still wanting to take that jab at Allison.

She motions dismissively at him. “Me and Renee. Me and Seth. Whatever. I thought we’d all be dead by now.”

“We’re not,” he points out, unhelpful.

“We’re not,” Allison agrees. When she extends her palm in his direction, Andrew is too entranced on the foreign vacant look plastered over her features to deny her another cigarette. Maybe he hasn't been giving Allison enough credit for her compartmentalization skills. “Jury’s still out on whether that’s a good or a bad thing.”

“Neither. Both. Who cares?” Andrew shrugs, lighting up another cigarette for himself. What Kevin doesn’t know, Kevin won't complain about. “It’s inutile to think about the past. It’s there anyways.”

“Wow,” she deadpans. “Betsy must love your sessions, yes? You’re such a ray of sunshine.”

Another similarity between Neil and Allison — neither fear Andrew a third as much as they probably should. "I'm not here to be pleasant," he reminds her.

"You're not here to do anything."

Andrew considers her words for a second, then nods. It's true.

"You're like one of those angry little dogs," Allison concludes, leaning back on her hand and blowing smoke upwards. She stops for a second to watch the rings dissipate in the air. "The ones that are always furiously shaking. We always thought so. Then Neil came and our opinion softened, a little."

He takes a drag from his cigarette. "That makes no sense."

She hums in agreement. No one says anything else.

Allison works her way through three to four cigarettes almost obsessively, high strung and tense like a bow. Andrew doesn't relate to or understand her grief, and it's not his business to try and talk her out of it, so they sit in silence with no unsaid words between them. He could get up and leave, but supposes Neil wouldn't be pleased if he allowed Allison to somehow injure herself, so Andrew sits and waits her out if only to keep a clean conscience. It's more courtesy than he'd give her a year ago, and it's enough, for now. That's what Bee had said — _if you can't muster anything for them at all, Andrew, at least attempt to be neutrally positive. Do no harm that's not explicitly necessary._

He fights the urge to jump. He fights the urge to smash the glass bottle to pieces. Instead, he settles in with his cigarette and recalls the entirety of Shakespeare's Hamlet with premeditated objectivity.

The next morning, Allison repays him for the silence with a pack of expensive cigarettes she had been hiding under her bed but did not want to keep anymore. For once, Andrew accepted the gift with a curt nod.

Small victories.

**iv.**

Everything else aside, Andrew has always been a fierce laborer when it comes to cooking.

It’s not fun and it’s not interesting, but it’s muscle memory he can get himself lost into. It gives him the permission of handling knives unsupervised, — though no one has ever stopped him before —, and it’s a quick, neutral activity for when everything else feels like too much of a struggle. Andrew doesn’t care about recipes and rarely ever looks them up; mostly, all he does is measured by his own taste, and his cooking is never fit for someone other because he never does it for anyone else.

That being said — what he’s doing for Kevin is by no means a courtesy. Andrew is just saving himself from having to hear an earful of whines and complaints tomorrow morning, Neil’s opinion on their relationship be damned. The Neil in question watches him furiously chop vegetables from the corner of the room, his hand settled around a bottle of beer as he snatches it from Kevin’s hands in hopes to easen his drunken drowsiness. Andrew is deeply displeased with the both of them, and hasn’t spoken a word in hours; he doesn’t know _how_ he got convinced to make dinner.

It was probably because they’d starve if he didn’t, which is to say that Andrew would be breaking two promises, and that he couldn’t deal with. No matter how much of a nuisance Kevin is, it’d be worse to let him roam around unchecked, and Neil — well, Andrew supposes he can’t just let him die. That’d be inconvenient.

So he cooks. He read a cooking book, once — at a former foster house. Or maybe it was a book about cooking, rather; Andrew doesn’t recall any recipes, so it must not had any. _I’ll feed you and make you strong. I’ll feed you until you can’t eat another bite, until you drop your forks and push your chairs away_ , had said the angry narrator _. I’ll feed you until you want nothing in your lives. I’ll feed you until you’re able to save yourselves. No one will be hurt by what has come from my hands._

 _No one will be hurt by what has come from my hands._ Fuming, Andrew sinks the knife into the middle of a carrot, watching as it splits under his blade. He takes a look at Kevin’s loose figure, his otherwise tense muscles stirred over the couch as Neil tries — and fails — to snatch the bottle from his hands with a half-moon smile hanging from the sharp corner of his lips. Andrew averts his gaze. _I’ll feed you until you’re able to save yourselves. I’ll feed you and make you strong._

Kevin is his responsibility — or has been, at some point. Andrew wonders if the instinct will ever truly vanish, or if it’ll linger forever, like a handful of moths lurking over a dead body. When he pours three bowls of noodles, he does it only so a bigger mess shouldn’t be made later on when a drunk Kevin tries to get himself some food. When he covers one of the bowls with a piece of cloth as to not let it get cold, he does it only out of habit. All in all, Andrew doesn’t care more than he has to.

“You’re vegetarian,” Neil points out a few minutes after, as they sit side by side on the stools near the kitchen counter, like he had just figured it out. Kevin is still mostly passed out on the couch — he should be up soon enough, because he’s a light sleeper through and through, but there’s still time before it happens.

Andrew thinks of the short-lived period he spent in the house in Columbia, and Nicholas’ vegetarian burgers to certainly rot in the fridge. “Yes,” he shortly answers. It might be the first time he ever acknowledged it.

“Since when?”

“High school,” he mumbles, picking at his noodles. Andrew has never felt less like talking before. Even manifesting a bit of care can be exhausting with this much denial pairing over his nape, like a guillotine-shaped necklace.

Neil inspects him like he has never seen him before. “I’ve never noticed until now.”

Andrew motions dismissively. “You were busy enough running.”

"Yes, but," he insists. "I hate vegetables."

"I know."

When Neil smiles at him once more, there's a trace of good sharpening his teeth that makes Andrew reconsider every minute up until now. "You know," he echoes, sounding flattered. "You pay attention to me."

Andrew doesn't answer right away. He does pay attention, clearly, but that's none of Neil's business. "What did I say?" He repeats himself, eyes trained to his own bowl of food. "You take care of Exy; anything out of that realm is not your business to take care of."

"And I told you you're my business to take care of," Neil answers just as easily. "Besides, there is no Exy going on for me tonight, remember? Kevin is too drunk to practice."

"Practice alone."

He grins. "No."

Andrew grits his teeth in annoyance. "Ask one of the upperclassmen. I'm sure they're dying to give you some undivided attention."

Neil considers it for a second, but eventually dismisses the idea. "I'd rather sit here and bother you until you tell me to go away."

"I am telling you to go away."

"No, you're indulging me on banter. It's different."

That Andrew doesn’t answer to. Sometimes it’s better to neither confirm nor deny Neil’s takes — the conversation will end up easier if he doesn’t.

They eat in comfortable silence, the sound of cutlet tapping against the bowl and Kevin’s soft snoring being the only lighthouses of sound in an entire sea of nothingness. Neil pushes most of the vegetables aside and drops them into Andrew’s food at some point, but it’s not particularly bothersome, so he doesn’t comment on it. It’s such a quiet evening — Andrew could almost say he enjoys it, though he knows well enough how much it lets on, if the untensing of his features into something less regarded means anything at all. He smothers the bone-settling panic away easily; Kevin and Neil have seen him look mildly relaxed before. This is news to no one.

Neil excuses himself to the upperclassmen company soon enough, but not without awkwardly lurking behind Andrew as if he didn’t quite know what to do in lieu of a goodbye. Andrew ended up kissing him, if only to keep Neil from stalling around like a vulture for the rest of the night. And then he’s gone, and, well — and Andrew is alone with a passed out Kevin Day.

Kevin Day, who is a capitalistic wet dream for every sports brand from this world to the next. Kevin Day, who is a ruthless, unpleasant, spineless man and an even less welcome addition to the Foxes’ lineup. Kevin Day, who is a borderline alcoholic and should never be allowed anywhere near an Exy racquet in the next few years, if only so he can build a personality for himself out of court. Kevin Day, the man Andrew swore to protect to his withering days. Kevin Day, someone whom Andrew will never — _ever_ — be able to run away from.

Neil still tries and insists that they are friends. Andrew is still buying pints of cherry licor ice cream, and Kevin is still eating them. They’re not friends; they’re conveniently adjacent chess pieces that haven’t been moved away from each other yet. Kevin belongs to the top — Andrew is a Minyard, and people like him never go anywhere higher than the rock bottom.

An irrefutable truth: Kevin is an awful human being whose history of abuse only somehow justifies his simultaneous God and inferiority complex. Another one: Kevin was born — or rather, adopted — into a cult. Another: Before Andrew, no one else had ever gotten through him before. A realization: Kevin, obnoxious as he is, might be the closest to a friend Andrew has.

A year ago, Andrew was willing to run this body raggedy if it meant Kevin would be safe, because he believed his life was worth more than his own. Now, things being as they are, he still doesn’t know how to get rid of the fierce protectiveness that simmers just under the pale skin of his wrists, it being only a small branch of the bottomless pit of anger he holds within his core. Back then, the battle used to be one manic man against an entire mafia, Kevin on his arm and nothing he wouldn’t go through to fulfill his promise. Nowadays, it feels more like Kevin and Andrew in opposite sides of the same sinking ship.

So it doesn’t matter. Friend and whatnot; by the time he graduates, Andrew will never see Kevin Day in person again.

He’s in the middle of showering when he hears who he presumes is Kevin tumble down the hallway, the sound of long limbs colliding against the ground thundering through the thin dorm walls. By the time Andrew is out of the bathroom, Kevin is sitting with his back to the wall, legs open and stretched out to meet the opposite wall of the narrow hallway.

He looks up at Andrew with huge eyes, seemingly less drunk. Kevin opens and closes his mouth a few times, debating on what to say, and Andrew — to his own surprise — patiently waits, if only out of curiosity. At last, Kevin mumbles: “You’ve made dinner.”

“I wasn’t going to starve,” he answers matter-of-factly.

Kevin looks up at him accusingly, thick eyebrows furrowed. “You left me a plate,” he points out as if in incrimination. “You cooked and you left me a plate.”

Andrew fights the urge to stomp on his ankles. “Next time I’ll let you die, then.”

“Next time you should.”

At that, Andrew kicks him on the shin with the very tip of his feet, sharp and precise. Kevin clutches it with a scowl. “Nobody likes a martyr.”

“Nobody likes you.”

“Nobody likes you, either.”

He opens his mouth to protest, but doesn’t. The Kevin Day the press sees is a cruel illusion, and as far as Andrew can tell, nobody likes whoever’s under the daydream costume, except for maybe Neil, who decidedly puts up with more than anyone ever should. “She would have liked you,” Kevin eventually murmurs, face stone-set in a perpetual unpleased scowl. He doesn’t have to ask to know Kevin means his mother.

Andrew stares blankly. “She’s dead, Kevin. I don’t care for pleasing a ghost.”

“I do,” he answers, pointed like a weapon.

“I know you do.” Andrew crouches down to his height, pushing back wet hair. “Kayleigh Day is dead. Riko Moriyama is dead. I hope Tetsuji Moriyama is dead. Nothing is going to be okay and you'll never know a version of yourself that's not buried under years and years of intensive therapy. Learn how to live for yourself, at least.”

Kevin grits his teeth, averting his gaze from Andrew’s face. “I don’t know how to.”

“Learn.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“It’s easier than following a dead woman’s rules.” He taps two fingers against Kevin’s temple as if knocking sense into it. “She doesn’t care. She’s dead.”

He stays silent for a minute, considering Andrew’s words. Kevin is so quiet he almost gets up and leaves, but he speaks up again after a few empty heartbeats: “Will you come visit her grave with me?”

Distantly, Andrew nods to the fact that he has never been to a cemetery before. He had wanted, at some point, to visit Drake’s grave and spit on it — or at least some sort of vandalism, a wish he had voiced to Neil and gotten positive feedback for —, but Bee thought it was a bad idea. Nevertheless, Andrew stares. “Why?”

“Please.”

“You know I hate that word.”

_“S'il vous plaît.”_

Andrew glares at him. “I don’t speak French.”

Kevin glares back. “But you know what it means.”

“Begging looks awful on you.” He stands up, dusting off his clothes as if being around Kevin for too long somehow drenched him in dirt. “I hate you. I’ll break your other hand if you’re not ready to go tomorrow any later than nine.”

Kevin offers him a hopeful glance and a curt nod. Andrew can’t stand the sight of him.

He heads off to the living room in hopes that Kevin will put himself to sleep one way or another, and is pleased enough when the bedroom door clicks down the hallway. Andrew toys with a cigarette stick as he lingers near the unprotected window, leaning his weight against the windowsill after he pushes the desk covering it to the side. The raven dark vastness of the night watches him with a leveled glare, its omnipresence a quiet warning, and Andrew is angry if only to keep himself from feeling anything else.

This is a dying world. This is a failing society. This is a withering body. This is a night sky, which is a graveyard full of already-gone celestial bodies that do not care simply because they are unable to do so. This building — and everything Andrew knows — will one day be left to rot. This university will continue to scam people into debts worth thousands and thousands of dollars long after Andrew graduates it. This country will remain killing its poorest and feeding its richest. This place will never, ever, get better and things will never be alright.

But — _but._ Andrew hates himself for the _but_. The last time he had anything aside from his own spine to hold himself up, Andrew had ran his body raggedy trying to keep it. He doesn’t know at which point he became a creature of habit; he doesn’t know why he’d put himself through this again. He doesn’t know why he’d handle Neil the knife and tell him just where to cut, but he did and he has and he will continue to do so until it kills him or Andrew kills it first.

He blows out smoke to the window. The stars can go fuck themselves; Andrew would choose the unchanging, dark vacuum of space over them in the blink of an eye. Light is frivolous when it’s not accompanied by the shadow it casts, and who it casts over.

Andrew settles in front of the television, feet hidden under his blanket, and swaps channels for a few minutes before choosing the late night news, no particular interest in them blooming within him though he watches anyways. It’s the same as it always is — someone got murdered, someone crashed their car, some politician said something that got another politician very upset. Andrew doesn’t know any celebrities and doesn’t like any sports; he zones out by the time someone brings up a famous singer’s name, and tunes in again by the time the anchor redirects the news to a particularly odd string of murders in South Carolina. It’s only mildly interesting on its own, but Andrew has two more years of Criminal Justice studies to do, and he’s not fond of being clueless.

He’s considering losing and admitting to himself that he wished Neil was there to give him something to do when Neil slips into the room carefully, closing the door behind himself quietly as to not wake them up. He looks surprised to see Andrew awake, but not very — Andrew watches, unimpressed, as Neil pulls out a soggy french fry package from his varsity’s front pocket. “They ordered in. I saved you fries.”

Andrew scoffs, but allows Neil to drop the package in his lap as he walks past, kicking out his clothes halfway through the hallway. “How considerate,” Andrew deadpans.

“‘T was the only vegetarian option!” He chirps back from the bedroom, voice low enough to not wake Kevin up. Andrew scowls at him when he comes back, already dressed down for bed. “Oh, come on. It’s not like I spat on them.”

“I wouldn’t put it past you.”

Neil snorts. “You’ve had my tongue in your mouth before. I’m sure spit is the last thing you should be worried about.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Andrew replies back shortly, popping one of the soggy fries into his mouth. Neil settles beside him on the couch with a respectable amount of distance between their arms and thighs, but tonight Andrew doesn’t want to be away. Tonight has hollowed him whole, and despite his best knowledge, Andrew wouldn’t mind it if Neil put a bit of love into his void. He should know better; he doesn’t. “You can come closer.”

Carefully as a cat, Neil moves closer and closer, until their limbs are touching and Andrew can throw the other end of the blanket over his lap as an invite. Neil fits against his side easily, making himself small enough to rest his head over Andrew’s shoulder, and it’s — it’s nice. It’s pleasant. “The upperclassmen want to take the whole team to an amusement park before Renee graduates,” Neil murmurs, eyes trained to the TV. He does that, nowadays — he tells Andrew about his day, about the things that happen to him, about the small thoughts he has nowhere else to lay down. That’s pleasant, too. “They told me to ask you to come.”

“Oh,” Andrew says. Not an agreement, nor a denial; it’s, instead, a sign that he’s willing to listen.

“I know it must not be your favorite place in the world,” Neil starts, voice soft and blurry around the edges. His hair is soft where it meets Andrew’s jawline. They’ve been sharing the same curly hair shampoo Nicholas forgot to take with him when he moved out, and it makes Neil’s hair a bit fluffier than it used to be. “But we don’t have to go on rides. We can just — I don’t know, I’ve never been to an amusement park before, but Dan said we could sit on the sidelines and eat cotton candy while the others go on the big rides.”

Andrew has been to an amusement park once before, with Cass Spears. He’s never visited since, but remembers hating roller coasters and enjoying overpriced cotton candy all the same. “Renee agreed to this?” Andrew asks in a flat tone.

“She said you wouldn’t go to an amusement park,” Neil explains, burrowing further into Andrew’s shoulder without acknowledging it. “Allison and I backed her up on it, but… Renee did want to go. Dan said we should at least ask before changing the location. By _we_ , she meant me.” At this point, he’s drowsily gesturing in tiny movements. Andrew focuses on his hands rather than the memory of Cass; it shouldn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. “We don’t have to go, though. We can always just go to Edens — Renee wouldn’t mind.”

Andrew hums. “I’ll go,” he puts down carefully. _You have to replace those memories, Andrew,_ Bee had said, not unkindly. _You have to rewrite all over them, eventually, if you want to live._

“You’ll go?”

“Yes.”

Neil angles his head to stare at him. “Why?”

“Because.”

“ _Andrew._ ”

He fights the urge to be more difficult than necessary, and offers a curt answer. “Bee.”

“Bee,” Neil echoes. He considers Andrew’s response for a second, the wheels on his head turning with effort. “Bee would tell you to go, or has she told you to hang out more with the Foxes?”

Andrew blinks. “Yes.”

Neil blinks back in confusion. “You’ve never wanted to before.”

“I don’t want to,” he says, simply. “I don’t owe you any reasoning for what I do, last I checked.”

A moment of silence. He fights the want simmering under his skin, the one that tells him to take a peek at Neil’s reaction, and waits — for something to bloom or rot. At last, Neil murmurs: “You’re letting them in.”

“I’m not.”

“Mhmm,” he nods, and Andrew steals at glance at him, all soft edges where there should be sharp ends and messes of endless auburn hair. Neil Josten is another one of his foolish daydreams; if that.

Andrew dozes off somewhere along the line. The next morning, Kevin leaves him a bowl of sugary sweet cereal on the counter despite his self declared battle against unhealthy eating habits. When Neil insists Kevin and Andrew are friends, Andrew doesn’t shoot it down right away.

**v.**

“Don’t worry, man,” Matthew says from where he supposes Andrew cannot hear them, patting Neil’s shoulder with a smile. “I’ll take care of him for you. Just go on the ride. You clearly want to.”

Neil steals a glance at Andrew, who is still pretending to not hear them as he sits next to Kevin in one of the amusement park benches. Aaron and Nicholas argue excitedly over which ride is the tallest, one of the rare moments Aaron shows any excitement at all, and Andrew is just trying to soak up enough in the sun that it ends up swallowing him whole. They’ve been at it for an hour already, strolling through rides as a nine-men group, and mostly Andrew has stuck to Renee, who seemed to enjoy the company. Neil watched closely behind as they walked, but looks a lot more wary now that they’ve taken a quick break.

“I don’t know,” he tells Matt, stealing another glance towards Andrew’s direction. Neil has never been good at grace — he’s always been prone to being gauche at random. Andrew doesn’t resent it. “I don’t want to make him go. He doesn’t like heights.”

“Then go with Dan,” Matthew patiently suggests. “We need to pair up to go; someone would be out anyways. Nicky can go with Aaron, Renee with Allison, and you go with Dan. Kevin goes alone. I can stay with Andrew.”

Neil frowns. The sun hits his hair and eyes and makes them both appear brighter, softer. Andrew is not a big fan of beauty, as it has done its number on him enough, but he pertains to those quiet flashes of lights — the ones that are there to accentuate the shadows between the occasional dash of brightness. “You’re just going to sit in silence with Andrew until we come back from the ride?”

Matt shrugs. He is a foot taller than Neil and not even half as intimidating. “If that’s what he wants.”

Andrew doesn’t get to overhear Neil’s answer, because at sudden their small clutter of so-called monsters breaks out in their own versions of a laughter, Nicholas’ arms quietly leaning over Aaron’s shoulders as if they had any business being comfortable around each other. He wants — to even acknowledge that, Andrew needs to wear his thickest cloak of apathy — to ask how can Aaron even allow Nicholas to be so fussy towards him after Tilda, but he supposes he understands it, through the lenses of his own mirror-like features. The comfort Aaron finds in Nicholas’ overbearing care is the other side of a coin Andrew resides opposite to, with both his bite and his bark.

It shouldn’t matter. To be here, at all, should feel like enough progress for Andrew as it is. It isn’t; it should be. Andrew wants to ask. Andrew wants to know. Andrew takes the easy way out, as he does, and turns his face to the other side of the commotion with blank features. _A creature of habit,_ Neil had called him.

When Aaron flinches away from Nicholas’ delicate carding through his tousled hair, Andrew sees it as if through the other side of a mirror. _Hello, brother._

Aaron doesn’t acknowledge his careful consideration. That indifference, too — familiar. Far too familiar to ever fit together without creating a reactive outburst in the process.

Kevin frowns in his direction, motioning to Andrew’s lack of sunglasses. “You’re going to go blind before you’re fifty.”

 _Hello to you too, sunshine._ “Would that finally make you stop slouching off of my back like a parasite?” Andrew asks, blunt and curt.

“It would make your job as a goalkeeper significantly worse.”

“Jesus wept, Kevin,” he deadpans. “It’s almost like you have no regards for my personal safety outside of court at all.”

Kevin scowls. “You’re chatty today.”

“Don’t take it as a compliment.” Andrew’s hands itch for a cigarette, but the poorly seasoned amusement park popcorn Kevin got for himself will have to do. He dips his hands into it easily, Kevin’s offended gasp like music to his ears, and shoves a single popcorn into his mouth before completing: “You’re getting old and boring.”

A truth: Kevin turned twenty-two last February. Another truth: Andrew will reach the big twenty-one this November. Both will go and have went without any celebration; Andrew’s gift to Kevin was an hour more than usual at late night practice.

It has no correlation to his previous statement. Andrew couldn’t care less about making his speech pattern easier for Kevin Day, born into wealth and fame, understand. Let him suffer a little for a chance in pace.

“I thought sobriety would shut you up for good,” he eventually answers.

Andrew motions dismissively at him, his hand way too close to Kevin’s face for it to be comfortable. “I live to disappoint.”

Kevin scowls again. At some point he shoves his popcorn in Andrew’s direction, done with his short-lived attempt at behaving like a normal person for once, and resumes to stare grim and glum into the sun, as if it had personally offended him. At sudden, Andrew is remembered why he chose to keep Kevin for himself about two years ago, despite his general obnoxiousness. For someone with so little emotional depth and complexion, he’s quite entertaining when he wants to be.

At length, Andrew ends up sitting by the sidelines as the rest of the team moves into a pack towards one of the tallest rollercoasters in the park, Kevin’s footsteps a bit quicker than the rest as he avoids curious bypassers and a little more than excited Exy fans who had just noticed his presence. Matthew sits by the other end of the bench, prim and proper like he knows Neil trusted him to be, and says nothing other than a quick “Hey, man, looks like it’s just me and you.”

Andrew wouldn’t acknowledge it were it another day, but — _but._ He’s been trying to be neutrally positive; as far as his lack of motivation can allow him to go. He nods in Matthew’s direction, a short display of reciprocated respect that had Matt’s eyebrows jumping up in surprise.

It’s silent for too long. To distract himself from the need of a cigarette, Andrew stirs up an old memory: “Indulge me a little bit, Matthew. How has sobriety been treating you?”

By nature, Matt’s entire frame wires up in tension, but the way he disarms after a quick second is a new reaction to an old quarrel. Damn Neil for whatever good light he has been shedding over Andrew’s attitude to the upperclassmen. “Better than addiction has ever treated me,” he answers, illicit and guarded enough. “How’s yours treating you?”

“My sobriety,” Andrew considers in both disdain and disbelief. The weight of the lack of a cigarette on his hand has never been heavier, and the empty spot where Neil should be sat on is the cherry on top. Eventually, he concludes: “I’ve had other addictions to keep up with, lately.”

Matthew hums in understanding. “I’m supposing those are not the ones you’ll have to go to rehab for.”

“No,” he agrees, slightly cocking his head to the side. “I’ll remain fuck-all crazy through them, much to the Foxes’ amusement.”

A memory: Knocking Matthew to the ground over laying hands on Kevin. Another one: _Glad to see you’re still fuck-all crazy_ being the upperclassmen’s first words directed towards him after he came back from Easthaven.

Andrew doesn’t believe in holding grudges and seeking revenge — all he believes in is making deals even, and Matthew has never been on credit. That does not mean he was kind.

“That’s preferable,” Matthew hums at last, observing the rollercoaster with child-like interest. He doesn’t look guilty; Andrew is secretly pleased. It means he’s tougher than Andrew gave him credit for. “Sober you almost knifed down a pig because of Neil. Sounds like a catch to me.”

“A pig,” Andrew echoes. “And here I thought the wealthy liked the police.”

“The wealthy whites, maybe,” Matt offered him absentmindedly. “Allison doesn’t, though. You wouldn’t know.”

“I wouldn’t,” Andrew agrees. He doesn’t quite care.

It’s weird, to be out of the realm of his own so called bitch pack. Andrew’s attention used to be monster-only territory before Renee, but back then they weren’t called that — back then it was just Nicholas and the twins, a lifetime ago. The lines dividing the cliques have gotten blurrier and blurrier after Neil, though not without a fight, and Andrew’s presence is somewhat expected, if not prefered, in team events.

The path up to here was not pretty, and Andrew didn’t have it in himself to go with grace. He’d never be these people’s friend — which is to say, he’d never be Kevin’s friend, either —, but there is too much between them to ever account the rest of the Foxes as strangers. Maybe this is family, after all, but only in the way Andrew knows how to; snarky and silent, simultaneously fierce and dismissive. He’d never sit at the same table as Matthew, Danielle and Allison and be able to look at them eye-to-eye, but they’re a slow, vanishing minority. Eventually, Andrew will learn how to live with them, too.

A consideration: Nicholas’ need to care for anything and anyone within arm’s reach might have rubbed off on him more than he thought. A painful prod: Cass Spears may have never taught him anything about caring, at the end. Everything Andrew inherited was born and eventually killed in the Columbia house, scrutinized under Aaron’s apathetic consideration and Nicholas’ nervous fussing. How lovely.

He doesn’t reach for neither a knife nor a cigarette. Instead, he reaches to where Matthew’s sunglasses hang from his collar, and takes them wordlessly, plastering them over his eyes.

Matt doesn’t say anything, and doesn’t try to take them back. Small mercies.

+ **i**

“Renee brought it up to you, then?” Betsy asks, voice unwavering but not unkind. Her pen taps against her clipboard gently, smudging the white paper from where Andrew could see it.

He nods. She continues prodding: “And you think it’ll be helpful, yes?”

Andrew nods again. Betsy nods in understanding, and turns to Aaron with the same trained ease. “What do you think, Aaron?”

Aaron ignores her question to send Andrew a betrayed look, though it serves as no threat. “Since when have you been interested in helping people?”

“Your brother may hold this cause very dearly to his heart, Aaron,” Betsy suggests, interrupting their conversation before Andrew could answer back with something snarky of his own. “Many sexual abuse victims choose to cope with their pain by helping fellow survivors to cope with theirs. Plus — from what I’ve heard, the Foxes already give a part of their profit towards charities, right? What would be the difference from that if you two were to give a short statement to an organization that helps survivors get back on their feet again?”

Aaron’s face turns sour. “He doesn’t need any charity.”

The lines in Betsy’s face become slightly sharper, but Andrew doesn’t focus on it, busy studying Aaron’s profile over the rim of his mug. She nods slowly. “No, he doesn’t. Andrew does not depend on Drake financially, though he did at one time. Many other victims are still trapped in their abuser’s home for not being able to sustain themselves financially were they to leave, and many organizations don’t focus only on that — as you well know, the process of healing after such abuse is often long and expensive, given therapy has an alarmingly high cost in the US.”

His brother steals a glance in Andrew’s direction, assessing his lack of reaction. “How is this going to help you? You’re an awful person. I don’t see how this could work.”

“Aaron,” Betsy starts, ready to reprimand him for the offhand comment, but Andrew beats her to it by raising his palm in her direction, a quiet plead to be left to fight his own brother-on-brother battles.

Andrew takes quick, short breaths before he starts: “Renee told me about it because she has been donating to this specific charity for the past year,” he lays out carefully, allowing the blank mask to settle uncomfortably over calloused skin. Betsy would later on scold him for his sudden retreat, but facing Aaron with any kind of vulnerability is still an off-limits ordeal. “She has met up with many of the people they’re directly helping, and has seen the material changes the donations have been making. It would be,” he grits his teeth, trying to push back the bottomless void of indifference he so often wishes to fall back on. “It would be a better outcome to this story. It would… Give a meaning to all of this suffering.”

“Do you feel like this would give it a better closure, Andrew?” Betsy asks delicately, the same thawed ice residing under her skin that let Andrew know she already knew what his answer would be, and was nudging him to own up to it.

He breathes in. Then breathes out. “Yes.”

“Can you elaborate on that?”

Andrew looks down at his shoes. “No.”

Aaron huffs in annoyance. "I just don't see how you can go from murderer to Christ alive in a span of two years."

"Aaron," Betsy carefully calls. "Your brother has been in a process of recovery for these past two years. Though it might seem like very little time to you, it is the first time Andrew ever got consistent psychological support in his twenty years of life. You're seeing the change a healthy environment makes firsthand."

"A healthy environment," Aaron repeats in disdain, almost spitting out his words. "And what a healthy environment it is, right? Stuck in a college dorm room with his own pet serial killer."

"Neil, you mean?" She asks in quiet prodding. Andrew knows this — he _knows_ her job is to break ill-growing bones to make them heal healthier. He knows all of this is for the good. It doesn't seem to help.

Aaron scoffs. "Who else? Andrew saw him at the airport once and hasn't let go ever since. He's been chewing on this bone since last year; I wonder what will happen when Neil realizes Andrew's going to get bored of him soon enough."

Betsy hums, tapping her pen against her clipboard absentmindedly. She looks casual, but Andrew knows her next move will be a painful jab by the way she seems to soften the blow by listening to Aaron's anger impassively. "And why does it bother you, exactly, that Andrew and Neil have a supposedly good relationship between them?"

Andrew's brother looks at her in disbelief. "A supposedly good relationship? Is that how you call fucking around nowadays?"

Her tapping stops. "If it's a relationship of such crass and irrelevant nature, why does it bother you so much?"

"It doesn't _bother me_ ," he fumes in a clear lie.

"It seems to," she answers back impassively, a steady wall not even Aaron's cruel remarks can get through. Andrew simply stays back and watches them battle it out over the rim of his mug, imagining himself to be far, far away from all of this commotion. "You've mentioned before your older cousin, Nicholas, is also in a same sex relationship, isn't that right?"

Aaron's dark eyebrows — a mirror of Andrew's own — stitch together in a frown. "Yes. And?"

"And, though you still dislike that because of issues brought up by yourself in our first session, you don't seem to harbor so many intense feelings towards _his_ relationship with his partner." She puts down her clipboard slowly, like a tiger eyeing a prey. Betsy is a fierce critic and a fierce advocate — Andrew is now remembered why she was able to put up with him through thick and thin. "It seems, in my professional opinion, that your problem with the nature of Neil and Andrew's relationship is not only moved by your own beliefs regarding same sex relationships, but also by your perspective of your brother. Correct me if I'm wrong, of course, but there seems to be a protective edge to your arguments, yes?"

When Aaron doesn't answer her question, she continues, just as sharp: "Do you think Andrew is being coerced by Neil into that relationship?"

"No." He scowls. "Yes."

"And you, Andrew, do you agree with him?"

Andrew slowly puts down his mug, interested by the sudden change of pace. "I am never coerced into doing anything."

"Well—" Aaron starts to argue, but Betsy interrupts him before something ugly gets out.

"Remember your brother's history of sexual assault is not yours to prod at," she brings their attention back to her seamlessly, a conductor to their cacophonous orchestra. "The things done to Andrew without his consent do not define his personality or worldview. Any thought otherwise would shift the blame onto him, and that is, as I said, not allowed in my office."

Aaron doesn't finish his sentence. That's a first.

"I am in no position to confirm or deny the depth of Andrew's relationship with Neil through our sessions alone," Betsy starts, checking the clock near the door for a few seconds before continuing: "But, as we have discussed before, Neil means a lot to your brother, and your brother to Neil. Rather as friends, partners or teammates, it is not our place to know. To harbor so many hatred towards one of Andrew's very few intimate relationships because you don't trust him enough to consent does not mean the relationship, in itself, is bad, but that you don't believe your brother can ever truly have agency after his abuse. That is an unhealthy mindset, Aaron. If you want Andrew to be happy, you'll have to trust him to call his own shots."

"Now," Betsy leans back on her chair, straightening her posture. "It's debatable that both of you have control issues, though for very different reasons. This urge, Aaron — to want to control and protect, that is — is very common in domestic abuse survivors. You are mimicking the behaviors you grew up with, and assuming love requires sacrificing Andrew's autonomy for his safety. Would you agree that this is a consequence of Tilda rather than Andrew's history of abuse?"

Aaron's knuckles are white from where he grips his armrest. "Maybe."

Betsy nods. "Thank you for your honesty. I fear we don't have the time to dig into this topic furthermore today, but we will do so next week. Now," she turns her gaze to Andrew, kinder than he reminds anyone ever being. "Are you satisfied with our session, or would you like to add anything to the conversation?"

Andrew shakes his head shortly. "No. I'm satisfied."

She smiles. "I'm glad. Have a good week, you two. I'll see you again next Wednesday."

Aaron is the first to go, storming off the room as if his anger was the spine of the righteous rather than a simple human reaction to having your beliefs doubted. Andrew lingers for a second, quietly studying Betsy's face and the thousands of different meanings she has given to him over the years, weak crutches to hold onto when everything else felt out of control. She allows him to look as he pleases, going on about her day by reaching for his now empty mug and Aaron's untouched glass of water.

Sometimes Andrew simply enjoys being here, quiet and unmoving. Betsy's office might be the only place in the world whose walls are thicker than blood.

"Are you quite alright, Andrew?" Betsy hums in his direction, gentler now that they're out of business.

"Yes," he answers so quietly it might've been a fragment of his own imagination. "Thank you."

Andrew doesn't have to tell her what for. She nods in understanding. "You're very welcome."

In the drive home, Andrew tries — and mostly fails — to smother away the conclusion he'd drawn out after today's session.

An irrefutable truth: No one before Betsy had ever tried to defend and understand Andrew this ferociously, with so much gusto and pride. An observation: Though there aren't many places where Andrew feels safe, there are even fewer people he'd trust so much vulnerability to. Betsy owed him nothing and did not get anything in return; all she does is _give give give_ to a man that's far too used to people who _take take take._ It's not virtue, not quite — she's not a saint. She's a middle aged, suburban woman with nothing to lose, no children of her own and a collection of glass figurines Andrew keeps adding to at every chance he has. Betsy is honest, unapologetically tacky, and if Andrew's bets and calculations were right, she would definitely win a fist fight with Cass Spears if they were ever to brawl.

These are all things that don't matter. Andrew keeps them close anyways. Maybe in the near future, when therapy is not as necessary and Betsy is not as set-in-stone of a pacifist, Andrew could teach her how to spare, or at least a handful of useful self-defense tactics. Admittedly, he is not a fan of how vulnerable she is to threats — Betsy should not even be living alone in the first place, let alone in a secluded suburban neighborhood where Andrew cannot reach or extend protection to.

He prods at his thoughts as the car eventually winds down, stuck in traffic. Andrew is angry, yes — but he has always been angry. The fury that fuels him now is not the same ever-burning anger he used to keep on himself at all times, and Andrew knows the distinction from years and years of living under the same roof of angry men and their bad habits. This, though; this is spite, flickering behind his gut and thawing the ice of apathy slowly, brick by boring brick. Andrew could say it became clearer after Neil came into the picture, but the urge — the _stubbornness_ that kept him alive belonged to himself only. This resentment lived so Andrew could breathe, so Andrew could run, so the occasional full-body shiver had a chance at losing a battle every once in a while.

Now, though — now Andrew knows that even if this anger isn’t as ferocious as it used to be, it still isn’t righteous, or good, or useful. Because anger, as he has learned from the many angry men from his past, is not constructive; it is not a crutch to hold on to, and it is constitutionally unable to love the angry men back. Betsy had told him, long ago, that his resilience did not come from rage, or fury — it had come from the tether Andrew found in simply existing inside his head, years and years of indifference coddling the life he left behind and allowing him to build rooms and more rooms inside his head, sturdy walls protecting him from the outside world. That wasn’t what he needed anymore, but it had been, at one point. Andrew was not to blame himself for it, but he should know it was time to let go.

He doesn’t want to let his story be defined by anger anymore — be it his or by the men and women that came before, with their loud, thundering voices and their heavy hands. Andrew doesn’t want to taint his righteous resentment with the anger the abusers had left behind, because, simply put, he doesn’t want to be like them. Because — because Betsy had said the power should belong to him, and nothing renders a man more powerless than his anger. Andrew needs to have nothing to do with it, if he ever wants to live.

That doesn’t mean it’s easy, and that doesn’t mean he’ll repent on his knees for all the time his anger has taken from him. It will always be there; there is no way to redirect this anger out of him without hurting someone else — or himself — in the process. The autonomy resides in learning how to live with that grief, and choosing not to let it cause harm. The healing is… In the choosing. In having a choice at all. In saying _yes_ and meaning it; in saying _no_ and meaning it.

Andrew takes a few turns around the campus, eyes trained to the road and not much happening besides the distinct hum of his chest, hollow like the cold material of a gun. That, too, is a choice. To will down the anger and the urge to hit the Maserati straight into a light pole, if only because Kevin would be too much of a nuisance if Andrew got himself hurt so close to the start of Championships. If only because Neil had suffered enough this year. If only because Nicholas would sob at the hospital room and make a fool out of himself. If only because Aaron would see another family member die without getting his closure.

So these — these are things Andrew thinks about. And they are good and they are bad, and they will never leave him. Andrew will have to find a way to talk about them if he ever wants to be close to someone, anyone, in the future.

By nighttime, Neil bribes him into participating in a movie night with the remaining Foxes — eight of them without Seth. Soon to be seven, as Renee’s graduations comes in a fast approach. These people will soon begin to disappear one by one, and Andrew realizes with ill-advised surprise that, though they aren’t his friends, their absence would be acknowledged and, to some extent, grieved. Things will never be as they are now. These people will never be as they are now. Andrew, too, will eventually have to leave.

An irrefutable truth: He’d never grieved leaving a place before. A painful prod: Leaving became a coping mechanism until it couldn’t be anymore. A quiet suggestion from a stubborn, neutrally-positive part of him: Though they aren’t friends, they can be family, and family in the way only Andrew knows how to — fiercely, ferociously, worth every cut and bruise and scream. You don’t have to be devoted to someone to want them alive, and that’s the most Andrew could muster. He wanted them alive.

He burrows further into Neil’s shoulder. Small, small habits.

Reasonably sized victories.


	2. ii.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Andrew sets his mouth into a bitter, thin line, grim like a ghost. "There is no such thing," he says, the words long and vicious around his tongue, "as loving me."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> clearly i have some issues to work through
> 
> tw for a brief discussion of aarons trial, drake, and at some point theres also some retelling from nickys part about his time in conversion camp because the author did a shitty fucking job at elaborating on it

“let ruin end here

let him find honey

where there was once a slaughter

let him enter a lion's cage

& find a field of lilacs

let this be the healing

& if not let it be"

**(SMITH, Danez. 'little prayer')**

**i.**

“Any summer plans, Andrew?” Betsy pleasantly hums, seizing the remaining minutes of their presumed last session of the semester to lounge around in easy-going small talk, the type that Andrew can only ever truly enjoy with her.

He presses his lips together in quiet consideration. Last year’s summer plans were protecting internationally famous Kevin Day from the mafia while keeping an eye out for starting striker (and professional liar) “Neil Josten”, all the while singlehandedly managing his sore relationship with Aaron and, with a bit more of relentless patience, counting the days until his certain death.

This year’s plans, though — he watches the tapping of Betsy’s flat shoes for a few seconds before saying, “Neil, Kevin and I are staying at Coach’s apartment for a few weeks before heading to Columbia.”

“How lovely,” she comments, voice pompous and tacky. Andrew had always wondered what he found so comforting in Betsy’s southern drawl and too-fuzzy sweaters, but he supposes it’s more about the way she portrays herself, — harmless and bright like a children’s show character — than the person she is when outside of that perspective. “You are sticking to your people, then.”

 _Your people._ Andrew still protested against the word ‘friends’ and Betsy still tried to cut his admittedly too-intense ties to the term ‘family’, kindly reminding him time and again that the people he knows are not to be divided between smothering devotion and stone cold apathy. He shrugs, “I suppose. Neil has nowhere to go and Kevin can’t be alone to save his life.”

“We’ve talked about this before,” Betsy offhandedly reminds him, contentedly sipping on her sugary sweet lemonade like it contained all of the secrets of the universe. Andrew did not like fruits all that much, and stuck to what he knew despite the crushing heat, nursing a mug of now-lukewarm hot chocolate to his chest in protectiveness. “About Kevin, that is. His personal struggle with being both alone and away from you."

It’s not censure, not quite — it’s a gentle reprimand to be better, do better. There was a time Andrew had eagerly wanted to please Betsy, to be told he was good and proper, but he’s past that by now, those feelings having dimmed into slightly more self-assured acceptance to her good willed criticism.

He doesn’t apologize, but lets her words hammer into his brain for a second more, a reminder to not punch downwards instead of upwards. Andrew gathers his thoughts for a few moments before saying, “Kevin has been ritually abused since he was child. He should be devoid of any attachment, but he isn’t. He should be.” He clears his throat. “Why?”

Betsy studies him from behind her pinkish glass — a courtesy from Andrew’s own wallet —, the red hue of her hair more comforting as it becomes muted along the grizzly spots. “Why don’t you ask him yourself?” she asks, but Betsy knows better than to assume Andrew shared a fragment of his mind to be told to ask someone else about it.

“The way I see it,” she starts carefully, “his relationship with Exy equals his relationship with people. Where you became detached, Kevin became attached. He is someone who experienced very little kindness in his life, so I imagine he’d go through many great lengths to keep the scarce amount of it he’s gotten over the years. And,” she takes a pause, considering her words, “what he sees in you is safety. He thinks of you as someone who will be kind to him.”

Andrew is not kind to him. Andrew is not kind — full stop. He tells her just as much, and Betsy offers him a disappointed glance in return. “Kindness is not an inherited trait, but a pattern of choices,” she hums, maintaining her undefeated optimistic posture, “those of which you can start making any day, any time. With that notion, Andrew; I think you are kind to Kevin. He would not keep you this close if you weren’t.”

“I am a threat to Kevin,” he tells her in retaliation, with practiced ease. “He respects me as a threat, and nothing else.”

Betsy lifts a palm up in his direction. “I will not tolerate that as an answer, Andrew. Kevin is someone who cares for and respects you very much. Whatever issues you have had before are in the past, where they should be. You are equals in a mutual relationship of trust and friendship.”

“I’m not friends with—”

“Andrew.”

He huffs, sinking back in his chair. “I don’t care about Kevin.”

“You care about Kevin,” Betsy disagrees on the same foot, though she is nonchalant about it where Andrew is stubborn, fierce; it means she’s winning this tug-of-war. “If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have driven him to his mother’s grave, hours away from campus, in one of your few off days. You would not have visited the grave of a woman you've never met."

Andrew turns his gaze to his mug, stirring the remaining liquid with calculated disinterest. Betsy is not entirely wrong, but he doesn’t like how simple it all seems to be when she says it. “Kevin doesn’t care about me,” he tries again, the words tense and newborn as they leave his mouth, as if blood dripping from a tender wound.

Something stirs in the air; a revelation. “I see,” Betsy murmurs, voice getting quieter, softer around the edges. “I think this says more about you than it does about him, hm, Andrew?"

Andrew doesn’t answer, eyes now carefully trained to his shoes, scattered over her carpet. He likes it when people say his name with such repentance, drawn out and pointed; every syllable makes him realer, more human, less of an object. None of his abusers called him by his name — there is too much power in one, and named you are loved.

Betsy takes his silence as a clue to keep talking and points out, “Kevin is a man of many dreams, you told me. You said that he is a child; that he has childish attachments and expectations. It comes across as if you find him innocent. The way you talk about him makes it seem as if Kevin is a friend that wants to have you around for as long as you’ll have him, which makes you believe he is naive. So,” she continues, closing off every escape route Andrew had traced for this conversation, “whether you will have him or not is the question.”

Andrew did not know if he could ever have someone without breaking them in the process. Come what may from it, he did not want to break Kevin; Andrew wanted him to heal perhaps just as much as he wanted him to live. “Yes,” he eventually murmurs, so quiet Betsy could have missed it.

She smiles at length, a small, wild thing that Andrew has learned to coldly hold on to for the past two years, keeping her pride at arm's length like an unlit cigarette between his teeth; strong enough to kill, never close enough to do it. She is gentle of words, but not all warmth — there is coldness in Betsy that thaws at his own iciness, urging him to do something about all of this pain, all of this grief. Andrew doesn’t really resent it. “Good.”

And that’s that. Andrew is never good, but sometimes he is.

The drive back to practice feels too warm, too sticky, too real. The leather grip his fingers have around the wheel engulfs his senses into something hard to peel away, an inconvenient reminder of his presence and all of the things that come with it. His nape is flushed, sweaty, Summer heat a sharp needle stitching a fever onto his skin that he can’t sweat away; it is July, and Andrew is tired of being brave, though he continues to be anyway. Sometimes people want something — in this case, for him to try — so much it feels like your duty to give it to them. Andrew once thought he was too smart for these things.

He puts effort into practice that afternoon — he tells himself it’s not for Kevin. He shuts down the goal at their last scrimmage of the academic year — he tells himself it’s not for Kevin. He accepts the water bottle Neil throws his way sometime after he switches with Renee on the bench, her last practice as a Fox before her graduation — he tells himself it’s not for Kevin. Andrew is never good, but sometimes Kevin likes to tell him that he is; today is one of those times.

“How did you _know_ Neil was going to aim there?” he asks, eyes round, shiny and endless under his helmet. Kevin is ridiculous, despicable, spineless, obsessive — but he had wanted Andrew once, and he wants Andrew now, and he hasn’t stopped wanting Andrew yet.

Andrew turns his face away from him on instinct. Green is still a hideous color; however bright it glistens in Kevin’s eyes. “My bad side,” he answers flatly.

Kevin looks baffled. “You don’t have a bad side.”

“Bad leg,” Andrew tells him after chugging down copious amounts of warm water from Neil’s abhorrent orange bottle, the one he never remembers to keep in the fridge and is always bitten at the tip. It’s an awful piece of matter; a waste of plastic and space.

“Since when?”

He offers Kevin a glare. “Christmas.”

Christmas. Easthaven. Andrew’s leg is fine — physically fine, that is — but Abby had told him it would take him some time to let go of the phantom ache and the occasional trembling, though it had gotten better over the past weeks. He hasn’t told Neil about that; he must think it’s from sparring. Andrew realizes, distantly, that this is the first time he ever acknowledged it out loud.

If Kevin understands the implications of his answer, he doesn’t press it any further. Instead, a small, barely knowledgeable smile peeks from under the grid of his helmet, sharp like Wymack’s scarce grins sometimes are. “If you put that effort into every game, you’ll be marked as Court before you even graduate.”

Andrew huffs. He wonders if it’s exhausting for Kevin to be let down so often. “So hopeful for a man who was sure he’d die before the end of the year.”

“Then stop giving me hope.” Kevin leans back on his hands, settling beside him by the bench. It’s a quiet dare; a glimpse at Kevin’s newfound spine; his way of showing off everything he was so sure he’d lose only a few months ago. Andrew can’t help but feel as if he taught him well.

He doesn’t answer Kevin for a while, but the answer is clear — _no._ As long as Kevin has it in himself to muster hope, Andrew can work with the sporadic scraps of will he finds in himself ever so often. It’s a bargain; a silent one at that, but one still. At last, Andrew says, "Stop looking for it."

Kevin shakes his head in defiance.

There is boyhood in Kevin to the likes of nothing Andrew knows.

It’s neither innocence nor virtue. What it is, though, is hunger, a hollow the shape of everything he could have been but wasn't, this sudden wanting casting acknowledgement over everything he had been denied. Andrew is aware Kevin would much prefer to rise above it, but Andrew _knows_ him — he knows Kevin has the clumsy type of affection only a too-grown child could muster, tentative and awkward and leaving no room to doubt the fact that he has never been loved correctly before, if loved at all. He spoke to no one and meant nothing; everything he was could fit into one big black void, the one that spreads and opens and climbs like a wild plant, harsh even in all of the places that are only there to be loved.

And it’s relentless. And he is relentless. And he will run himself to the ground for it, because he doesn’t give up when he should and hasn’t grown a day past the age of seven years old, when everything was achievable and nothing was everlasting. Andrew wants to hate him so much it’s almost a torment.

But he doesn’t. Despite his best, nearing efforts, he doesn’t. Maybe he needs Kevin’s childishness just as much as he needed his own, back when it first disappeared, and maybe boyhood is the next best thing Kevin could give him. Maybe, maybe. There is grace and losing something and having a… Friend give it back.

Andrew is a bride to silence for the rest of practice, but that is okay. One day, all of this will fossilize into something much easier to take care of, and he will be able to look at hope in the eyes without cowering under its heavy gaze.

He stares at the back of Kevin’s head as they go up the stairs of Fox Tower, imagining it to be everything horrible and faulty Kevin has ever done before and forgiving all of it in the process. It feels more freeing than Andrew thought it would. Neil slips out of their suite after showering and Andrew goes in next, leaving Kevin to sit by the cramped living room with a presumably history book on his lap and a concentrated frown to his features.

Andrew tolerates history; it is easy and then it is not. He used to keep Kevin awake at night by constantly asking for explanations regarding random historical facts, as per Wymack's request, and Andrew remembered all of his answers with bone-chilling ease, the vivid look of Kevin's face loud and flicker like a lifelong Opera. He had been medicated then, of course, but the mania would be put off slightly at the sheer struggle of paying attention to Kevin's words, retreating in the face of his stubbornness. Andrew slept best in nights like those; he dreamt of Celtic kingdoms instead of stained white sheets.

He also remembered the small historical processes Kevin seemed to be fascinated about, all as equally boring and frivolous as he is. Andrew had asked him only once about the history of yarn, but that was enough to unfold an one sided conversation so long and so resistant that, by the end of it, Kevin had contradicted himself and his own opinions at least four to five times, switching between perfectly valid points and arguing with himself with the same ferocity he argues with Neil. That, too, made him a child — Andrew can't recall one single adult person he ever met that would be so careless with what they put this much time and effort in, aside maybe from Nicky. Not that Kevin cares.

They worked on a project together once, for class. Andrew needed to inconvenience his professor as much as possible without losing his grade for it, and Kevin had suggested a paper about ancient murderers whose information had been scattered around in the poorest of languages, barely understandable even for those who knew old, old english. Andrew shot it down at first, deeming it too much work, but Kevin brought him a book about it the day after — they studied it together in graveyard silence. It had been a good day, then; Andrew did not have many of those. Sometimes Kevin's boyhood melts into mischief so delicate so easy it's hard to believe he is the same man that clenches and unclenches his left hand obsessively when they pass a stranger clad in too much black clothing, but Andrew knew both sides of him very well.

So maybe that's why he asks, "What are you reading about?"

And maybe that's why Kevin says, "Do you really want to know?"

And maybe that's why Andrew hums, "Yes."

“It’s a poetry book,” Kevin explains, neatly folding a dog ear on the page he was reading before closing the book and offering it for Andrew to pry at.

He takes it, making sure to avoid touching Kevin’s hand as he does so. It’s a reasonably thin book, a black and white picture of a young woman staring off into space stamping its cover ominously. It was a collection — perhaps the author’s best works, or the most famous ones. “Mary Oliver,” Andrew reads out loud, a tinge of skepticism to his words.

Kevin has the decency to look a bit embarrassed. “Betsy said it would be good to seek new interests.”

“As have I,” Andrew hums, skimming through the pages with disinterest. “Hell must be freezing over.”

“You didn't ask nicely.”

He motions dismissively. “You wouldn’t have taken me seriously.” Andrew turns a few more pages before settling the book back into Kevin’s hands, adjusting himself on the couch so as to be half lying down at the armrest, an arm thrown over his eyes. “Read.”

Andrew couldn’t see Kevin, but he could guess he was frowning. “Out loud?”

He hums in agreement.

“Which poem?”

“Any.”

Kevin huffed. “That’s not how poetry works.”

“Your favorite, then.”

“I don’t have a favorite yet, as I haven’t read them all.”

Andrew blindly reaches to pinch his arm, pulling against the bare skin left by his tank top with little grip to it. “Read,” he repeats.

Kevin bats his hands away, moving as far as the cramped space of the couch could allow him to be from Andrew. “I don’t think you’ll like it—”

“ _Kevin,_ ” he snarled, “just read it.”

“Fine _,”_ Kevin bites back, presumably stomping his feet onto the ground in defeat. Andrew settles back against the armrest, lazily flickering between paying attention to the sound of pages rustling and the humming of the fridge, buzzing with electricity. Kevin clears his throat before starting, his tone rigid and undoubtedly awkward, though Andrew’s refusal to look at him might have helped to oil up his courage. “ _When it’s over, I want to say; all my life I was a bride married to amazement,_ ” he reads, “ _I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms._ ”

Andrew shifts, burrowing deeper into the couch. There’s the sound of Kevin flicking a page before he continues, “ _When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real.”_ The sound of Kevin’s feet tapping at the ground, his voice gathering a less robotic tone as it goes on. “ _I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened or full of argument. I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world._ ” Kevin clears his throat again. “That was one.”

“Hm,” Andrew answers, “childish even for you.”

“Betsy suggested this book,” Kevin repeats.

“But you wouldn’t read it if you didn’t want to.”

“No,” he agrees, “I wouldn’t.”

Andrew curls up to the cushion. “Read,” he commands again.

This time, Kevin does it without a fuss, his words coming out clearer, more confident. “ _They stay in my mind, these beautiful people, or anyway beautiful people to me, of which there are so many,_ ” he starts all over again, the layers and layers of his voice coming together to form the blooming of a lily pad, opening and closing and eventually dripping summer all over the room. “ _You, and you, and you, whom I had the fortune to meet, or maybe missed. Love, love, love, it was the core of my life, from which, of course, comes the word for the heart._

 _And, oh,_ ” Kevin read as if he was the one who had just been reminded of something, and not the author, “ _have I mentioned that some of them were men and some were women and some — now carry my revelation with you — were trees,_ ” — another flick of a page — “ _Or places. Or music flying above the names of their makers. Or clouds, or the sun which was the first, and the best, the most loyal for certain, who looked so faithfully into my eyes, every morning._

 _So I imagine_ ,” he says, _“such love of the world — its fervency, its shining, its innocence and hunger to give of itself — I imagine this is how it began._ ”

Andrew hums. The words were loud, clear, sharp — they left no place for imagination, and Andrew would remember them, as he would remember the sound the pages made and the deep, strong muscle it had taken Kevin to read them, though it would only do him good to better his speech. “That’s bad,” he says. Andrew means it in a much broader sense than just the quality of the poem, but he can’t trust Kevin to know that.

“They are not bad, Andrew,” Kevin protested weakly. “They’re… Endearing.”

“Endearing,” Andrew repeats with a yawn. “Who are you?”

“An adult trying to recover,” he answers simply, tone flat but nevertheless honest. Andrew believes him — Kevin _has_ been trying to heal, though he hasn’t gotten any the wiser, only softer, maybe kinder. He would still pick fights on and off court — Andrew believed he would never lose that habit — but they wouldn’t last any longer than necessary. He had only almost broken Neil’s nose twice this week; what progress.

Andrew motions dismissively at him. Kevin takes it as a sign to keep reading, and that is what he does, firing away poem after poem. It’s not as bothersome as when he’s running his mouth about Exy, so Andrew allows it.

He wasn’t stupid enough to think Kevin was a sheltered kid. Andrew knew Kevin’s silver spoon was a knife, and it had been pressed to his throat more times than it had fed him any riches. In some odd, jagged way, he understood Kevin to a level he did not understand the other Foxes — Andrew, more than anyone, knew what it was like to feel most threatened at the home he was supposed to feel the safest in.

Andrew filed that out for later. For now, all there is to this room is Kevin’s voice, which wasn’t inconvenient enough to be a problem.

**ii.**

In retaliation for the times Andrew visited her room on the account of meeting Renee, Allison helps Neil pack for the summer.

Andrew doesn’t know how or why they got so close, given Neil’s urge to blend in and Allison’s tendency to make every small thing an event, but it had happened somewhere between his first day as a Fox and the present day, which explains the loud sound of heels knocking against the ground as she walks around their dorm, hands on her hips. They’re civile with each other on the grounds that they share a team and a Neil Josten, and Andrew has learned to mind them — the Foxes, that is — a lot less than he did before, what with the deal with Aaron being broken. They weren’t friends, Andrew supposed, but they did go through last year somewhat together; he respects them enough to acknowledge that.

She also has taken a liking to bantering with Neil on the purpose of asking Andrew about his clothes. Allison pulls a particularly ratty shirt from the pile of clothes Neil had been choosing from to pack, turning to Andrew with disbelief stamped all over her face. “You let him go out with this?” she asks, holding it between her thumb and pointer finger like it had personally offended her. She had no regard for Andrew’s gruffness and did not care about the times he’d blanked her completely; much like Nicholas, Allison shaked off of rejection almost too easily. They were both confident people by nature.

It was an ugly shirt. A size too small, burn marks all around it, the thread falling off of the hems and the print peeling off, what lead it to look like criminal evidence rather than clothing. Knowing Neil, it’s probably both.

Andrew bunches up a handful of shirts into his bag without sparing her a glance, though Allison knew he must have seen it by the slight frown of his mouth. “I am not the boss of him,” he answers with disinterest.

Allison offers him an unimpressed glance. “Someone has to be.”

“Hey,” Neil complains from where he sat behind his pile of clothes, dividing them into what was wearable and what he would let Nicholas burn once he’d gotten back from his summer in Germany. “It’s not that bad. I can use it as a sleep shirt.”

“You said that about the last four ragged t-shirts,” Allison reminds him, sitting by the edge of the bed to carefully fold the revolting piece of cloth Neil called a shirt despite her complaints about it. She reaches out to the burning pile and places the shirt on top of it. “You are a normal member of society now. Please look like one.”

“That boat sailed months ago,” Neil tells her, motioning to the scars on his face as if to make a point.

Allison makes to reprimand him, but Andrew beats her to it by spitting, “Shut up.”

“Yeah, Neil, shut up,” she agrees with Andrew for once in her life, pulling another shirt into her lap. Andrew distantly notices the contrast between her shiny lilac dress and the muted, washed out tones of Neil’s clothing. Princess and the Pauper. “I spent weeks covering up your tramp stamp, so I know every plane and dip of your face. You’re lucky you’re this handsome, because no one else in this team would’ve been able to pull the scars off like you do.”

Neil offers her a smile. “I didn’t pull them off.”

Allison stares at him. “You don’t want this conversation to continue.”

He agrees with her that Neil pulled the scars off better than anyone in their team ever could, but says nothing. If Renee were here, she’d smile at him like she knew. “Why do you need so many clothes, anyways? You don’t go out,” Allison changes the subject, eyeing both of their bags suspiciously. “Are you two secretly party animals and I have not been made aware of it?”

Andrew ignores her, but Neil, sappy as he is, seems physically unable to. He scoffs, “What do you think, Allison?”

“I think I’ve seen this one’s skills at beer pong,” she answers easily, pointing towards Andrew with her chin as if he was part of the decoration, “and they’re suspiciously good for someone who appears to rarely party, if at all.”

“What are you implying?” Neil plays along.

“I am asking you to think twice before you get lured into a fraternity is all,” Allison hums, stacking more folded shirts in the burning pile. She hasn’t put a shirt in the wearable pile in at least ten minutes, but Andrew can’t really blame her. “College boys are assholes. You’re better than that.”

Neil snatches a shirt from the burning pile. “I’m a college boy too, Allison.”

She rolls her eyes. “ _Straight_ college boys are assholes. How’s that?”

“Ah, yeah,” Neil agrees, a grin taunting his features, “Aaron is a nightmare.” He steals a glance at Andrew’s direction, searching for a reaction, and Andrew unwillingly allows him to find a slight twist of his mouth, barely a smirk. Neil seems satisfied with it regardless.

Allison considers his answer, gracefully ignoring their small, silent exchange. She eventually shrugs, “Aaron can be a sweetheart when he wants to. To Katelyn, at least. Although,” she leans back on her hands, perfectly brushed blonde hair falling over her shoulders, “from an objective point of view, you probably chose the right twin. Andrew’s no Miss Congeniality, but I feel like you match.”

Andrew has no idea what a Miss Congeniality is, and less so does Neil, who mutters, “I know _some_ of these words.” He moves a pile of his own clothes to the side, now bringing out the tons and tons of black outfits they’d gotten him for Columbia, dumping the bag where he usually keeps them over the bed. Allison’s eyes grow twice their size; like a cat’s widening pupils at the sight of a particularly shiny prize. Neil smiles proudly, “Andrew chose these.”

“Did he, now?” she hums, pleased. Allison dives into the pile, pulling a few pieces of clothing to her lap in wonder. “I have to say I’m pleasantly surprised. You clean up well.”

Andrew barely grunts in acknowledgement. He wouldn’t, normally, but Betsy has been asking about his interactions with the rest of the team, and Andrew had to have at least one incident to tell her about. Allison seems pleased with the response — or lack thereof. “This is cute,” she pulls out a black cardigan from the pile, holding it out over Neil’s shoulders. “Oh, this is _cute_ cute. Neil, why didn’t you start with the cute ones? Why do you hate me?”

“Because,” he starts, taking it from her hands and folding it neatly, in the specific way he still does out of instinct. Andrew watches him fold the tag twice with mild interest, having abandoned his own packing by now. “I don’t wear these a lot. They’re nice clothes.”

They’re really not that nice — Andrew is sure many of these were bought secondhand, though Neil seems to treasure them nevertheless. It’s slightly bemusing, given thrift store clothing might be almost _too nice_ to what Neil’s used to. Allison coos, “Aren’t you a baby bird. I’m buying you clothes when we see each other again.”

Neil interjects, “I don’t really think I need—”

“Neil,” Andrew interrupts him, tone placid, “let her.”

Allison claps in joy. “Oh, this is _everything._ We’ll make it a girls’ day.”

“I’m not a girl, I don’t think,” Neil offhandedly comments, neatly organizing his clothes into his bag. “Not that I remember.”

“You’re an honorary one,” Allison hums, kneeling on the bed to help him. She kicks off her heels, letting them scatter all over the carpet, and Andrew wonders how someone could walk on them so often without permanently injuring their skeleton in the process. Kevin hated them — he’d complain about how they hinder her balance, to what Allison usually tells him to fuck off for. “You’re one of my girlies, see, but in a different way. It’s a state of mind.”

“I thought that was Renee.”

“No, Neil.” She shakes her head. “Renee is my girl, full stop. You’re my _girlie_. I can have many girlies, but I only have one girl.” Allison sits back on her heels, motioning vaguely. “It’s like… Okay, so it’s like this: Nicky and Matt are your boys, for example. But Andrew is your _boy._ ”

“You just said the same thing in a different intonation,” Andrew points out numbly, sensing Neil’s awkwardness flaring up the longer Allison tries to explain to him something he doesn’t understand. Neil mouths _thank you_ from where she couldn’t see him. Andrew hates Neil very, very deeply.

She twists her neck to glare at Andrew. “I’m helping you out here.”

He glares back, cynical. “Pass.”

Allison rolls her eyes. Andrew has no idea what Renee sees in her.

But perhaps he does — she assists Neil on packing with little to no incidents, bargaining on a few shirts she deemed too ratty to take but still open minded enough to allow him to take some of the nicer ones, on the premise that Neil would only wear them to sleep and nothing else. Knowing him, he’d wear them to late night practice too, if only just so he could bother Kevin with it.

Allison doesn’t pry, doesn’t ask, neatly ignores things she knows are not hers to notice. She had a bit of Renee’s softness and a bit of Neil’s unwavering secrecy, which made her all that more interesting to Andrew’s eyes, though he would never admit it. Nicholas liked her the most out of the upperclassmen, Kevin was rumoured by hungry tabloids to be in a relationship with her at least twice a week, and Aaron, surprisingly, had nothing against her. Allison could very much be one of the monsters if she wanted to; she had the temper and the drive for it.

But her emotions got the best of her. What made her chilling cold also made her burning hot, and she’d flicker between both of those moods too much for it to do any good. They’d clash too much, Andrew thinks, or not at all; neither of them knew how to back down, and if they were to ever attempt at being friends, they’d be at each other’s throats half of the time. Neil wouldn’t enjoy it, and they’d ruin the fragile ecosystem that led the Foxes to their first — and, realistically, last — championship.

It would not be worth the trouble. Maybe in a distant future, when Andrew is finally done with Exy for good and not held back by anything that comes with it. Maybe, maybe. For now, it feels foolish to even wonder about such things, so Andrew smothers that bit of optimism away and hopes it never comes back.

She leaves around four in the afternoon, promising Neil to swing by the morning after to assist him in running his errands — things like checking out of the dorm and tucking a spare key that Andrew probably could have done for him, but did not want to —, though it would have to be quick, given she’d be leaving for the airport later on to spend a few weeks at Stephanie Walker’s home before returning to South Carolina to help Renee finish moving into her new apartment, only a few minutes from campus.

Renee had offhandedly asked if Andrew would be interested in keeping a key to her apartment, as they were partial to keeping their sparring sessions, and Andrew told her he’d… Consider it. He hasn’t considered it; Andrew would bring it up with Betsy on their next session — online and through Skype, but a session still — and would not make a decision until then, which he knew Renee expected from him with the way she nodded, pleased to be even considered at all.

Andrew may not have had the same fierce protection for Renee as he had for his lot, but that was only because she could take care of herself very well, excelling even Andrew’s own reckless shielding when it comes to ruthless self-defense. That doesn’t mean seeing her go where he couldn’t extend protection to was either pleasant or ideal — Andrew knew, objectively, that no harm would come to Renee, yet he still planned to swoop by her apartment just to touch base with her neighbors and the state of her security system, a courtesy that could only ever be hers. It would need to be before she and Allison left, so maybe next morning he’ll visit. Andrew will have to see; Neil took a lot of time from his schedule already.

The rest of the day goes by in pleasantly automatic manner, practice pushed aside and the campus slowly but surely emptying out as students leave to attend to their summer plans. Nicholas left for the airport the night before, and Aaron would be hitting the road with his girlfriend after dinnertime, everything about that plan tending to Andrew’s most sorely irritated nerves, though he said and did nothing about it. He’d drive Neil and Kevin to Wymack’s apartment the following afternoon, and it would be just enough of a bother for Andrew to crave aloneness for today, locking himself up in the bedroom until dinner and trusting both of the strikers to keep out of trouble for the remaining hours. It was too tall of an order, but Andrew could do nothing if Neil and Kevin killed each other — he could not punish one for it without breaking any promises to the other.

Andrew showers, dries up and gets dressed with the lights out. That’s something Betsy found a way to make worthwhile — back when even looking at his body felt like too much of a struggle, she’d suggested turning off the lights instead of avoiding mirrors and showers altogether. It was a stupid solution to a stupid problem, but it worked. He would only do it every now and then, now, the hardening of muscle separating his present body from the scrawny, bruised mess Andrew once saw in the mirror and relieving him from at least the bigger part of his issues with it. The darkness is comfortable; in its mindless void, Andrew was boundless, limitless, untouchable. He was no one’s anything, and in return had no one to mean him anything. In return, he could ignore the flesh and skin he was so desperate to get rid of.

Then he read. Not always, not a lot, and certainly not ferociously like Kevin did, Andrew read. He did not buy books — a waste of money he did not truly have — and only copped pirate copies on the internet if he truly wanted to, though the ones he most read were given to him by Renee, who insists on pretending she has a library card for herself rather than for Andrew. Betsy lends him a few of her own books occasionally, but they were mostly about psychology, a theme Andrew doesn’t enjoy anymore than he enjoys Exy. It’s always a hit or miss with anything non-fictional, for him, but Renee had gotten good enough at knowing his tastes for most of her picks to be hits in Andrew’s eyes.

Today, though — today Renee had chosen him a poetry book. She’d skimmed over its details with him the last time they met, just about last week, pleased to soak up under the afternoon sun as they ran keen laps around the court. Renee always read them first, but only because she knew Andrew would not read something without knowing about it first, and had no reservations regarding what she thought of it. “It’s good, but in a way you don’t expect it to be,” she had said in a bare hum, mercilessly tearing through Andrew’s apathy as he paid true, undivided attention to her opinion, “it feels very confining at first, but only because he is good at his job. I don’t think it was a book about good people living good lives; it was more about bad people trying very hard to be good.”

 _Very fitting,_ Andrew had thought then. Now that he’s flipping through pages with buzzing interest — not quite there, but trying badly to be as it punches against the ceiling of his indifference —, he thinks Renee’s thoughts about it summed the author’s prose more or less. It wasn’t just a collection of poems; it told a story. A sad one, maybe, but a story still. What an unpardonable sin Andrew was committing by even reading this at all, scraping at the surface of his enjoyment, allowing himself to settle back against his mattress and letting the muscle simply be. He did not care enough about moral codes and whatnot to claim that he was a bad person; that did not mean he thought he deserved to be regarded as deserving of anything but.

The name of the book, quite comically, was _War of the Foxes._ Perhaps Renee had picked it up as a joke and realized, halfway through, that she enjoyed it. Perhaps she felt just like Andrew does now, at sudden startled by his growing endearment towards it, tense and unfamiliar like the empty space between the hammer and the nail about to touch for the first time.

 _He was pointing at the moon but I was looking at his hand. He was dead anyway, a ghost._ Said the pages, deep muscle of earth running through the paper that had come from a leaf that had come from a tree that had come from the ground Andrew stands on, one and the same in what they meant and what they represented. _I’m surprised I saw his hand at all. All this was prepared for me. All this was set in motion long ago. I live in someone else’s future._

The words — they mean something. They always do. Andrew knew words intimately because he was scarce with them; because he did not have many to give. People who had chatterboxes for mouths took words with dismissal, nonchalance, but Andrew knew better than to think his own would not run thin if he were to do the same. Words had to mean something to be real, they had to share truth in them to the likes of nothing anyone knows in order to be deserving of the spoken tongue. Language was crude, lewd, vulgar; a dirty ratchet thing that stuck between teeth and refused to let go — Andrew had very little of it and, likewise, himself to give, so he did it sensibly, rationing pieces of the person he was to the few people that deserved it.

But that’s the problem, isn’t it? If Andrew did not give himself away to many people, that meant he was the one who owned most of himself still. That was no better of a bargain; he owned everything he hated the most. He couldn’t keep himself and he couldn’t give it away, see, because if even Andrew did not want it, then who would?

 _No one,_ he reminded himself, _and unwanted you’re free._

Anyways. Poetry is bad for the human brain. It sheds light over what is hidden, and by doing so, it creates a newer, darker shadow than the original, pointing out the places where the poor reader hasn’t been stitched up quite right yet. Andrew finishes the book, but promises himself to never read a poetry book ever again — he downloads the author’s prequel works right after. He finds himself quietly thinking that poetry of any kind is the patched up work of stitched together, hidden pain, to the point it becomes a creature that will not only love the reader back, but accept them wholeheartedly. How immorally wishful; this misplaced wanting. Andrew buries this thought deep within himself for another time.

The rest of the evening is spent mindlessly reading through text messages he’s been ignoring since last October. It’s July now — will be August soon. Nicholas sent him pictures of the German sky, mostly; Andrew has never been to Germany, but with how lovingly Nicholas talks about it, it feels kind of frivolous to not think of it as a near shelter, given how German comes so easy on the tongue.

This has nothing to do with ancestry. The Minyard surname is not even slightly close to German, instead more acknowledged as maybe Scottish or British, though these things don’t matter — family is an invention, not a God given destiny. Someone put a name to a group of blood related strangers and called it ancestry; Andrew, taking the opposite view, would simply consider it for what it is: a group of strangers. People who had been once young together, which doesn’t mean a lot. Andrew, too, had once been young with Aaron — look at where they are now.

He eats dinner. He drives Kevin and Neil to practice. He tells Nicky, via text, that he's already eaten, fuck off, stop fussing, don’t you have better things to do? To which Nicholas tells him no, he doesn’t. He reads the news — a car accident, a war breaking out, the stock market crash, so and so. He pretends to doze off by the couch in the Court’s lounge. He thinks about the goddamn book instead. Kevin and Neil yell at each other from the locker room.

Boyhood is at its sweetest when it’s quiet; when it drips down the walls; when it is slender and swift-footed and holding a handgun. Andrew is twenty years old, was sixteen just yesterday, and then, and then. He was never a child and he will never be an adult; Andrew will forever be Andrew, and that is all he has always been. Since he’ll be stuck in this body forever, it should be enough. To be Andrew, it should be enough. It isn’t. It should be.

So, is it a midnight lie when he tells Betsy he is okay?

No, he doesn’t think it is. Andrew is bad at lying; he is better at silence. When he tells her he’s okay, he means it to his low standards of what okay looks and feels like, on the grounds that he has been eating and he has been sleeping and all of his smiles happen behind closed doors, bare flickers of motion that belonged mostly to Renee or Neil, though sometimes to Kevin, Nicky, and even Aaron, once. ‘Okay’ does not mean healed, but it often means healing. Andrew thinks it’s going to be a never ending process.

 _How beautiful would you be, if you could choose?_ Betsy had asked him once, in a fleeting manner, as if it didn’t matter at all. Andrew does not want to be beautiful now, but he wanted to then; _so beautiful no one would want to hurt me,_ he would have told her if he had the guts to. _So beautiful I would heal. So beautiful there would be no one as beautiful, and no one as treasurable, and no one as worthy. I’d be so beautiful,_ he would tell her, _that anyone would want to protect me._

Andrew is twenty years old now, not eighteen, and he wants simpler, easier things. Neil’s hands; Kevin’s voice; Nicky’s quirks; Aaron’s silence; Renee’s smile. He wanted to see Betsy every Wednesday and visit the roof every day. He wanted, wanted, wanted — so much so overdue that it became a void in his chest, to a point where Andrew believes he will never be satisfied again. He’ll always want, punish himself for it, and then want some more. It’s a losing game, these confines of his. Andrew wishes he could say he’d punished himself enough for the past years, but he doesn’t know how to stop doing the only thing he knows how to, so he doesn’t.

“You alright?” Neil peers over him from where he just leaned against the back of the couch, elbows resting a few centimeters above Andrew’s head. “No playing today?”

Andrew would roll his eyes if they weren’t closed. “No.”

“Is that your answer to the first or last question?”

He kept his eyes closed; scared that seeing Neil so close, his long eyelashes and sharp chin, would awaken something in him that he would never be able to put to sleep again. “Last,” Andrew eventually tells him.

“You’re thoughtful these days,” Neil hums, keeping his skin from coming in contact with even a strand of Andrew’s hair. Small christianies of his. “Should I be worried?”

 _I am a thoughtful person,_ Andrew would say if he could afford to. Instead, he answers, “It must be a shocking revelation to you, but some people have thoughts every day.”

Neil fake gasps. “It can’t be.”

Andrew snorts. Not a laugh, but he’ll get there one day. “I’m serious though, Andrew,” he mutters after some well-deserved silence, “will you keep your sessions with Betsy this summer?”

“None of your business,” he reminds Neil out of instinct, “but yes.”

“How are you going to do it?” Neil asks, nonplussed by the rudeness. _Good_ , a part of Andrew says. The small, foolish, frivolous part of him that wants to be kind protests weakly, and Andrew smothers it away. “Are you going to ask for Kevin’s laptop?”

“I don’t know yet,” Andrew informs, nonchalant in return.

Neil nods in understanding. “I was thinking we could buy a laptop. We could share one.”

When he says _we could buy,_ what he means is _I’ll buy it._ Neil has so much money he’s willing to burn through as quick and easily as possible; he’d buy Andrew the world if he asked. “For why do you need a laptop?” Andrew replies instead of pointing that out.

Neil shrugs. Andrew knows, for a fact, that he doesn’t need one. “Class.”

“The library.”

“Exy.”

“Kevin is more than happy to watch Exy videos with you.”

He huffs. “For _you_.”

Andrew blinks his eyes open in half-hearted surprise. He didn’t expect Neil to say it out loud. “I don’t need one.”

“I know,” Neil says, trying to pass off his small admission of care as a nonchalant, day-to-day conversation, “but it’ll be easier for you if you have one. You hate the library and you need to work on your assignments somehow _._ Plus, you and Betsy will have to Skype each other, eventually, when you graduate.”

There are three more years of college for Andrew, though — graduation is far away. He mostly borrows Kevin’s laptop when he needs to work on an assignment, and Betsy could simply call him on his phone for distant sessions, but it would, indeed, be easier if he had a laptop for himself. That doesn’t mean he needs one, and it doesn’t mean Neil has to be the one who buys it. “I don’t need it.”

“I want to give it to you.”

Andrew grinds his teeth; a bad habit. Nicholas would complain if he knew. “There is nothing I can give to you in return.”

Neil grins, toothy and bone-white. “I’ll think of something. I have all summer.”

“I won’t agree to something I don’t know what is.”

“Alright,” he concedes. Neil turns the offer over in his head for a moment before saying: “What about practicing? I’ll buy it for you and you’ll practice with me and Kevin all summer.”

Andrew turns his nose. “Her Majesty won’t be pleased.”

Neil, once again, shrugs. “Right, ‘cause that’s a world of difference from usual Kevin behavior.”

It _is_ true. It was a fair bargain — Neil would blow money on him and Andrew would have to practice a sport he hates all summer. At last, he motions dismissively, sinking back into the couch. “Fine. We’ll buy it tomorrow.”

Neil does a small cheer that made it seem as if _he_ was the one getting a gift, and not Andrew. He was so ridiculous; wanting to give Andrew the world in spite of knowing he doesn’t deserve it.

Andrew shows his gratefulness the only way he knows how to. He kneels on the couch, straightening his back and turning to Neil with a vaguely intentioned air. Andrew leans a bit closer, forearms resting over the top of the cushion, and asks, “Yes or no?”

“To what?”

He rolls his eyes. “Kissing you.”

Neil smiles. “Yes, but avoid the scars.”

Andrew doesn’t answer but leans closer, tentatively hovering his hands over Neil’s shoulders in expectation. Neil nods, and Andrew rests his hands there, squeezing the harsh muscle underneath and feeling his fingertips buzz with the tension in them. He squeezes again, this time stronger, until Neil’s tension gives out and melts into easy, easy peace, slumped. “Your hair?” Neil asks vaguely.

He nods. “If you want to.”

It’s been too long — Andrew leans in and kisses him.

Here are the things he knows about wanting: it is not virtuous; it is not good; it is the dirtier, more superficial sister of language. There is a reason why people call it a love language — wanting is the intersection of the spoken and the tangible, where the mind, always the fool, translates the wanted's breath into waves and waves of violent, irrevocable wanting, suffocating the person behind the barrel. The crucial difference, of course, resided in the hands; wanting was something you did with your entire body, whereas language you were lucky to keep in your mouth. Together, they make a monster.

Neil's fingers thread through his hair delicately, and Andrew is a monster, but only in the way he knows a monster to be — a patched up mess of heres and theres, odd but not unloved, ugly but not by choice. A monster is the aftermath of violence; is the aftermath of wanting. Andrew had known both, and he decided he liked wanting more when Neil sighed into his mouth, gorgeous and quick like a car crash smile.

There is no genuine hatred in Andrew directed towards Neil. He knew what it felt like to be simultaneously hated and wanted by the same person, and knew, too, that there is no place for violence in this wanting, because they had experienced enough of it for a lifetime. This is why he tries his hand at scratching down Neil's back lightly, fingertips going down his collar and neatly avoiding marred skin that was not his to touch. Neil leans into it, humming his approval, and the world needs not to end; it just needs a brighter saturation.

"I swear to _God,_ " Kevin's voice thundered through the lounge, loud and displeased. Andrew flips him off without pulling back. "This is childish even for you, Andrew."

Neil pulls away, sliding his hands from the top of Andrew's head to the short hairs at his nape. "Kevin, go wait on the Court."

"No. You'll start kissing again."

Andrew offers him a cynical glance. "What, you wanna join?"

Kevin's face grows an angry red. "I want you to give him back."

He frees himself from Neil's grasp easily, brushing his thumb over his lips to get rid of the weight of Neil's mouth against his own. Neil, of course, notices and smiles. "All yours," Andrew hums, motioning towards him.

"Neil, come on."

Neil doesn't move, staring at Andrew as if he never saw anything as remarkable before. Andrew holds his gaze unflinchingly, bored.

" _Neil._ "

Nothing.

When Kevin makes to grab Neil by the back of his shirt, Neil pulls out of their staredown with a cheeky grin, allowing himself to be dragged towards the Court by an unamused Kevin. Andrew would have to practice with the both of them for the summer, and it suddenly felt not that bad of an ordeal.

They buy the laptop. The visit to Renee’s new apartment was short lived. Life goes on, see, because it knows nothing but.

The trip to Wymack’s apartment was short, sunny and sprinkled with loud music, courtesy of Andrew who did not want to listen to Kevin and Neil’s insufferable arguing for the entire ride. He wasn’t any more partial to music than he was about the other few things he enjoyed, but Andrew had found solace in counting beats when everything felt too overwhelming of an ordeal before, so he figured he’d do it again. It also took care of his nonexisting attention span, and gave him something to turn over and over in his head without necessarily tiring himself out. Music is as convenient as books, as cooking, as — sometimes — Exy. It helped him pass the time.

Kevin and Neil had been the opposite of convenient with their arguing about who should get the passenger seat, which is why they have both been exiled to the backseat, Andrew’s duffel bag sitting beside him instead. It is much more pleasant than either of them, and it fits in so silently Andrew might just arrange every ride to be like this from now on. He’s sure Aaron, Nicholas, Kevin and Neil can pile up in the backseat just fine; at the worst of scenarios, Kevin would have to sit in someone’s lap. Poor him. Andrew couldn’t care less.

“Andrew, this is _childish,_ ” Kevin reminds him, a few exits from Wymack’s neighborhood. The quiet had lasted him long enough — Neil had dozed off on the other side of the backseat, which meant Kevin had no one to glare at, and he simply could not do without having someone’s attention to himself. It seemed to please him even more if said attention was Andrew’s.

 _What he sees in you is safety_ , Betsy had told him when asked about Kevin, _he thinks of you as someone who will be kind to him._

Andrew can’t help but feel slightly unnerved by how much freedom Kevin allows himself to have around him, on the grounds that he believes Andrew will do him no harm that can be helped. It’s a faulty belief because Andrew _has_ done him harm before, and though Kevin had brushed that off so quickly, as if he believed himself deserving of it, Andrew didn’t quite know what to make out of that yet. Maybe it was because Kevin, much like Andrew and Neil, was used to violence; he knew that getting used to kindness was pointless because cruelty was always possible later, and he knew what it was like to live under the crushing weight of a boot. Maybe Kevin thought it was fair.

But Andrew doesn’t like that. It’s been months since it happened, and though the blatant break of their deal didn’t seem to affect Kevin, it was still a crack in Andrew’s word, and it bothered him to no end. He swore to protect Kevin and went through great lengths to do it; only to lose his control at the first sight of anger, shattering the small, neat part of him that still believed Andrew could trust himself to be left unchecked. Kevin had grown up under Riko Moriyama’s heavy fists and, when he finally found himself freed from them for good, Andrew had managed to simply switch whose fists were causing him the harm instead of eradicating said abuse completely, even though he promised he would.

Andrew didn’t regret it, but it was still a broken promise. Kevin has kept his end of the deal, and Andrew hasn’t. He wouldn’t be able to move past it if he didn’t know what Kevin thought about it — he wouldn't be able to live with it if Kevin didn’t at least make them even.

At length, he huffs, pushing aside those considerations to turn the volume of the radio even higher so as to finish off whatever argument Kevin had in him. Andrew would talk to him later, but not now and certainly not in front of Neil. Kevin kicks the back of Andrew’s seat like a petulant child, pointed but not hard enough to hurt, and something turns in Andrew’s stomach — something ugly and sore and almost guilty, though he didn’t believe in regret. He quietly wondered if Kevin would purposefully damage Andrew’s Exy career if asked to do it, if only to make them even in their lackluster uphold of their ends of the deal. Andrew is bugged by the conclusion that Kevin wouldn’t.

Wymack is in his office when they first arrive, Kevin’s key scratching at the lock in familiarity. Andrew had come here one too many times in the past, and so has Neil, but Kevin’s presence felt like more than a new addition to the otherwise empty place; when he navigated the apartment with so much ease, Kevin might as well have been part of the decoration. Andrew isn’t sure of what that means about his relationship with his father, but he supposes it had to be at least a slight improvement. He files that consideration for later along with many others in favor of unpacking in the guest room he claimed as his.

It was a small three bedroom apartment, meaning two of them would have to share a room. The logical answer was, of course, Andrew and Neil, though it felt somewhat bothersome to Andrew, who would not just be sleeping in an unfamiliar place but also with a companion. It wasn’t unnatural of them to sleep together, and Andrew shared a dorm room with both Kevin and Neil back in Palmetto, but maybe it would help him rest easier if he could be alone in a room for a few days. He doesn’t communicate it because he isn’t asked about it, but Neil lingers by the doorway as he watches Andrew unpack his clothes into a drawer.

He is, surprisingly, the first to back down from Andrew’s tense silence, asking the question that’s been pairing in the air for a few seconds now: “Do you want me to room with Kevin?”

Yes. No. It’s a complicated answer.

Andrew doesn’t want to _have_ to sleep alone, but fighting against it would only do further damage, and looking past his own wishes would taint the sacred trust Neil and Andrew are beginning to have in each other. He doesn’t particularly enjoy this laundry list of terms and conditions needed for his comfort, but he knows following it is his best shot at recovery, whatever that is. Andrew doesn’t look at him as he says, “Yes. For a few days.”

Neil hums. “For a few days?” he echoes. It’s not refusal or reluctance; it’s a further prod at what boundary Andrew is trying to settle, curious but not forceful.

“Ask me again later,” Andrew tells him.

“Alright,” Neil answers, disappearing from the threshold to presumably unpack his own bag. Maybe it’s best this way — the guest room isn’t all that big in the first place, and the only reason Andrew chose it is because it’s the only one that locks from the inside, a courtesy Wymack offered him the first time Andrew spent a night in his apartment. As far as he knew, no other rooms aside from his office had locks in their doors. Small mercies.

Abby would be away all summer for a nursing course, which meant Wymack’s apartment would belong to the four men for the next month, at least. Andrew doesn’t know what to expect from this short-lived vacation, but it could not be that bad — Wymack had his own collection of cigars, good booze and kept to himself and his pay grade; the only foreseeable conflict that had the potential to ruin Andrew’s summer was the issue with Kevin, and the only way to solve it was talking it out. _He is a friend that wants to have you around for as long as you’ll have him,_ Bee had said, and Andrew had agreed to wanting Kevin in his life. He could not take it back now.

Andrew’s ears perk up as he hears Kevin and Neil’s voice from the room wall to wall with his, the division so thin he could almost make out Neil’s muffled words to perfection. “Don’t be a baby, Kevin. We share a room at home,” he says, simultaneously teasing and prodding, “so what’s the problem here?”

“The problem is that you will take advantage of this to make my life a living hell,” Kevin answers accusingly.

“You make your own life a living hell just fine on your own, though,” Neil reminds him, and Andrew is once again perplexed by their ability to turn anything into an argument. He knows Neil is not the nicest, but he expected a better temper of Kevin after so many years of etiquette lessons — perhaps the Raven in him is dying, after all.

 _Good,_ a voice in his head says. _Let it die._ Andrew allows the words to simmer for a moment before chasing them away.

“I swear to _God,_ Neil,” Kevin whines petulantly, but doesn’t finish his sentence. If Andrew knew Kevin enough, it’s likely that something else caught his attention; probably Exy related. “They’re uploading the Trojans’ scrimmages on YouTube this week.”

 _Of course._ Neil replies with the same enthusiasm, “ _No_ way. You think there’ll be commentary?”

“Jean told me there would.”

“He _told you—_ Kevin. We have to watch.”

That’s when Andrew stops paying attention. He’s, at sudden, glad to have a room for himself.

Wymack orders them around at the mere sight of scattered belongings, unwavering in his promise to keep the apartment at least organized and clean enough to live in in Abby's absence. Neil wouldn’t be a problem, given he has and is nothing, but Kevin has brought one too many books from home, and they sat at each corner of the apartment the more he read into them. Andrew himself wasn’t a messy person by nature, though it was fun to leave things around and wait for them to battle out who was the culprit of such crimes. Unfortunately, he could not pull that off for much longer here; Neil always knew when a shirt was Andrew’s. What a tool.

The days are lethargic summer dreams only South Carolina can offer. Andrew is out of bed by the early noon and lounges around lazily for the entire day, switching between smoking cigarettes with either Wymack or Neil in the balcony or reading in the living room, completely ignoring everyone’s presence or lack thereof. At night they have dinner over the sound of the TV, sometimes an Exy game Andrew has no regard for and sometimes a documentary Kevin chose and Wymack had indulged on, but Andrew doesn’t linger much. He’d kept his promise of practicing with Kevin and Neil as he said he would, so the alone time Andrew gathers before it’s time to leave for the Court is sacred. After practice, when the lights are off and Wymack is long passed out, Andrew sneaks Neil into the guest room and sends him off (or not, occasionally) sometime near three in the morning. The next day, rinse and repeat.

This is probably why Kevin and Neil look the happiest, most relaxed Andrew has ever seen them look since the beginning of time. The routine is simple, hedonistic, easy to survive; it meets all their basic needs and keeps the things they love close to them, where no one could snatch them away. Andrew can’t say he hates it here, because he doesn’t; he is satisfied with having time to be alone and a room that locks from the inside. They were — God forgive them — happy during the aftermaths of war, shutting off televisions when Riko Moriyama’s face appeared on them and trading swigs of expensive whiskey under the ceiling fan. If Andrew knew or deserved happiness, it would look quite like this.

It’s during one of those afternoon smokes at the balcony that Neil slips into his side, leaning against the ledge with a far away glance and nothing to say except a quiet, “You look relaxed these days.”

Andrew wouldn’t dignify that with a response if he weren’t in such a reasonable mood, but today he allows the words to come out. “I’m assuming you’ve come here to ruin it,” he replies, bringing his cigarette stick to his lips once more before taking a drag. He doesn’t spare Neil a glance, but he doesn’t have to; his image is tattooed in Andrew’s brain, impossible to erase.

“On the contrary,” Neil hums at him, reaching for Andrew’s cigarette with the ease of a liar. He puts it to his own lips for one, two, three seconds before giving it back, puffing out the smoke to the warm summer air. “Nicky called to say Luther has been admitted to a hospital. Lung cancer, he said. It’s probably deadly.”

He doesn’t know what Neil expected him to do with that information. Revenge is a foolish, adolescent fantasy Andrew had gotten rid of years ago. “Hm,” Andrew says.

“Yeah,” Neil agrees as if he knows what goes on in Andrew’s head, which he doesn’t, but he likes to pretend that he does. “It’ll be inconvenient if he died before Aaron’s trial, but who knows? When something like this happens it almost gives me hope.”

Andrew thinks of all these people — Riko, Drake, Luther, Proust — withering away, their images becoming memories that would be outlived, outran. Satisfaction is a wild, irrevocable thing; it lives stubbornly between his ribs. “When is Nicholas coming back to see him?” he asks, already unimpressed by the answer.

Neil smiles as if it’s the best part of the story, all tooth and nail. “He’s not. But he did ask if he and Erik could tag along with us in Columbia; he said Erik wanted to see the house for the first time.”

It takes him a few seconds to let the words _He’s not_ settle in. Nicholas had said he’d never willingly come in contact with his parents again after last November, but Andrew hadn’t expected him to be strong enough to pull through with his word, because he’d never been before. It makes something in Andrew’s stomach churn uncomfortably; the thought of Nicholas having accepted their abuse for so long but drawing the line at them bringing Andrew any harm. It fucks up his whole mood, mostly — Andrew kills the light from his cigarette with his thumb, throwing it to the air.

“He doesn’t need anyone’s permission,” Andrew grits his teeth. “It’s his house.”

“Yours too,” Neil points out, unhelpful.

Andrew motions dismissively. “Are you done being the bearer of news?”

He huffs. “Aren’t you going to pay me back for my services?”

“I didn’t ask you to tell me,” Andrew replies with ease, nonchalant as he is.

“But I did.”

“Your choice.”

“I thought everything with you was a transaction.”

Andrew tips his head back to stare at the ceiling, as if praying for patience. “What do you want, Abram?”

Neil stammers for a second at the name Abram, but regains his posture not even a second after. He grins, “A kiss.”

He is despicable; vile; of the miseries of the word, the worst. Andrew lets him lean in anyways. Lets him get close, lets him hover, even tips his head up to stare right into his face. Neil smiles like he knows, and Andrew kisses him if only to wipe that smile out of his mouth permanently. He pulls away a few seconds after, watching Neil blindly chase after him before catching himself doing it and halting cold in his tracks.

Andrew raises an eyebrow; almost imperceptible. “Get lost.”

Neil smiles even wider than before, copying Andrew’s mockful salute before turning on his heels and walking straight into the apartment.

What an asshole.

**iii.**

Erik Klose is tall, blonde and harmless.

These were Andrew’s first impressions of him, in that particular order.

He’d seen Erik in person only a few times before, and even less so when the Columbia house was their home. Andrew supposes Nicholas did not ask for him to visit for many reasons — their household was unstable as it was, and adding a stranger to the mix might have tipped off the already sinking iceberg of Andrew and Aaron’s relationship for good, their own with Nicholas faltering without any external help. Erik sent financial aid when he could — though Andrew had only learned that when Nicholas let it slip during a particularly bothersome shift at Eden’s — and mailed the twins German candy from time to time, an awkward attempt at courtesy that maintained him interesting to Andrew’s eyes.

Everything he learned about Erik had been against his will, on the grounds that Nicholas’ favorite hobby seemed to be running his mouth about him. Andrew knows he’s working towards getting his own therapist office — very Christian of him, though he’d been informed that Erik is as fond of religion as Andrew, which is not at all —, and has been made aware of the fact Erik knows very little about Exy, and even less about Kevin Day, Riko Moriyama or anyone of the likes. Andrew felt like that might be noticeable from Erik’s strong German accent alone, but he couldn’t be sure Kevin was going to pick up on it; either way, Erik would not be going back to Germany without an ostentious Exy knowledge. Kevin wouldn’t allow him to.

Other than those factoids, Andrew knew little to nothing about how Erik was like. Whatever he imagined him to be, he hadn't expected… This, though maybe he should have. Andrew had, admittedly, forgotten how normal, non-Fox people behaved.

“Would you like some coffee, Andrew?” Erik asked from the counter where he prepared not one, not two, not three, but four different mugs of coffee for each person in the house aside from himself. His glasses were slightly crooked to the side as if he had just fallen out of bed, light filtering through fine blonde hair in irritatingly gentle ways as he didn’t wait for an answer before busying himself with whatever breakfast he seemed to be making.

Andrew stood by the doorway, watching Erik. He was unimpressed by nature, but wondered what Neil thought of him as they must have at least bumped into each other after Neil’s morning run, and what would Kevin say at the unexpected act of kindness, ever the politest of them all. At last, he takes one of the mugs for himself and disappears behind the counter to the breakfast table, quiet and blearily like a cat. Erik doesn’t acknowledge him, instead squinting at a box of instant pancake batter as if he had never seen it before in his life, and Andrew realizes he probably hasn’t. Erik’s English is just as good as Andrew’s German, but it must have been out of practice.

After five minutes of Erik squinting in silence, Andrew huffs impatiently and says, in German, “It’s the same everywhere in the world.”

Erik jumps back in surprise as if he had forgotten Andrew was there at all, though it must have been the sudden German that got his attention. He slowly puts down the box of batter, blinking at Andrew through thick glasses, and replies in English: “I have no idea what it says. The letters are too small.”

“I am farsighted as well,” Andrew tells him in German still, dumping sugar cubes in his coffee and watching them dissolve one by one with the steaming hot milk. He doesn’t look at Erik the entire time. “It’s the same as in Germany.”

“Have you ever been to Germany?” Erik asks, unconvinced but willing to listen.

“No.” He shrugs. “But I live with Nicholas.”

Erik turns that in his head for a second, then deems his qualifications enough to start ripping through the ingredients with automatic ease, following silent instructions without ever peeking at the box to know if they were right. He is quiet in a way that therapists often are, at least from what Andrew has gathered from Betsy and the ones before her, though he portrayed himself with a childish ease, fickle with his attention span and even more so in conversation. His voice was calm, well paced, guarded; everything about Erik came off as accidentally harmless, but still tender. Awkward, but tender.

That was probably the type of person Nicholas wanted to settle for. Good for him, he guessed.

A pan sizzles awake, and Erik asks, in a now quieter tone, “Do you guys have chocolate chips?”

“I don’t know.”

He nods. The sound of a drawer opening and closing. Erik speaks up again: “Do you _want_ chocolate chips on your pancakes?”

Andrew thinks about it for a second. He didn’t usually eat breakfast on campus, but pancakes were pancakes, and if he asked for chocolate chips it would warn both Kevin and Neil away from his food, given one’s hatred for sweets and the other’s obsession with his so-called ‘healthy’ eating. At last, Andrew hums a yes.

Erik draws a frowny face on his pancakes with the chocolate chips. He doesn’t look even a bit baffled when Andrew stabs it in the eye.

Kevin is the next to wake up, ruffled from his head to his toes and barely verbal as he strides through the kitchen in long steps, stealing a mug from the counter without even looking at it. He was a zombie in the mornings, but he was worse when he first came to Palmetto, back when he still hadn’t gotten used to living through actual twenty-four hour days. Andrew had his own methods of keeping Kevin awake for long enough to fix his sleeping schedule, but Kevin was stubborn at best and vicious at worst; even Andrew would admit it’s sometimes best to simply let him be. This morning was one of those mornings.

He grunts Andrew and Erik a greeting before slumping on the chair beside Andrew, immediately cradling his head in his arms and closing his eyes. Erik peeks at him curiously from over the counter, then slides his glance back to Andrew, at once questioning and slightly bemused.

Andrew stares back, but eventually gets bored of it, and explains, in German, “This is just how he is.”

“He doesn’t look alright.”

“He is not.” And that is all Andrew limits himself to replying, sipping on his coffee as Kevin, quite literally, passes out beside him with this mouth hanging wide. Erik doesn’t make pancakes for him on the grounds that he is violently unconscious, but leaves a pitiful apple near his head, careful to maneuver himself in a way that wouldn’t awaken Kevin.

Neil walks into the kitchen freshly showered with the mistrust of a stray cat, tip toeing around the counter to grab one of the two remaining mugs with a slight frown to his features. He studies Erik for one second too long before greeting him a good morning, a gauze curative covering up his burn marks. Andrew doesn’t ask him about it, but Neil maintains a routine of tending to the burn scars every morning so as to prevent further complications. Abby had recommended it to him as placebo, he supposes; Andrew only pays attention because the scarring seems to bother Neil, somehow, and the excessive tending manages to ease out the discomfort.

“Where’s Nicky?” Neil asks, pushing Kevin’s extended arm to the side so he could take on the seat in front of Andrew.

Erik makes a sound from the kitchen. “Went grocery shopping,” he replies, the strong German accent blurring the meaning of his words ever so slightly. “Pancakes?”

Neil makes a face. “No, thank you.”

Andrew has yet to discover how Neil manages to be so detached from sweets, but he supposes Neil has other addictions to cover. It doesn’t make it any less bewildering, though men, Andrew thinks, are always disappointing in one way or another.

Erik doesn’t join them at the table, looking comfortable and pleased enough to just be cleaning up the kitchen and washing dishes as they come. He’s odd to the likes of nothing Andrew knows, but it’s not bothersome. Neil steals Kevin’s untouched apple and stares off into space, the silence welcomed with open arms as the hum of Erik’s footsteps take over the room, short lived but clumsy enough for Andrew to know he was not the kind of person who ever had to sneak around a house before. It’s the same way — Lord have mercy — Katelyn walks, confident and unaware; as if they deserved to walk this Earth instead of having fought tooth and nail for their right to exist in it.

Neil must have realized that too, because his eyes trace Erik’s path from behind the rim of his mug, equally bewildered at how someone could simply _be_ without tons of baggage lowering their head. It would be funny if it wasn’t so inherently sad.

For a while, it’s just them and the silence, but Nicholas’ presence cuts through it in the sound of crinkling plastic bags and tapping shoes, announcing his arrival. It’s maybe the first time Erik’s expression shifts into something less guarded, his interest obvious as he zooms through the room to take half of the inhumane amount of grocery bags Nicholas carried on him. Neil, looking glad enough to have Erik stop being so unnerving, follows him and takes the other half, to which Nicholas offers him a small smile in return. When they lived here, Nicholas and Aaron would mostly bring out the groceries for Andrew to organize them the way he thought seemed fit. The sight is somewhat too much to bear paired up with the memory, so he averts his eyes and flicks Kevin in his right wrist, pointedly avoiding his left side altogether.

Kevin doesn’t jolt awake like he would if Andrew had flicked his left hand, but he cracks one eye accusingly, glaring at him. He doesn’t look present enough to talk, as sometimes he can be, but his grunt makes it clear that he was deeply displeased in Andrew. When he attempts to close his eyes again, Andrew flicks him again, this time harder.

“Stop,” Kevin mumbles.

“Wake up,” Andrew answers, not bothering to mumble back or keep his tone down. “It’s twelve in the afternoon.”

“And?”

 _And you’re the only person in this place that’s not a ghost,_ Andrew doesn’t tell him. Instead, he reaches out and shakes Kevin’s arm harshly, enough to make him straighten up with a scowl. “Just _why_ does Your Majesty need me awake?” Kevin viciously asks, back to his usual, displeased state.

Your Majesty is just a few words away from My Lord, and Andrew wants — _needs_ — to be as unlike an authoritative figure to Kevin as possible if they ever want to be… Friends. He hadn’t kept Kevin away from the Moriyamas for so long to transfer him to a new master now; Andrew would not allow it to happen. “Don’t call me that,” he replies, sharp and rough.

Kevin’s mood sours considerably, but he rephrases it: “Just _why_ do you, Andrew, need me awake?”

Andrew sets his mouth into a thin line. “Be useful for once.”

Kevin’s eyebrows shoot up in annoyance, but he does the math in his head after a few seconds of staring around the room, realizing that, right now, he is the only neutral ground Andrew can stand on. Nicholas and Neil are too close to him and are prone to prying at Andrew’s behavior; Erik has known Andrew since he was sixteen, and would be nothing short of overbearingly sweet towards him. Kevin is his only shot at being treated with indifference, to which he scowls harder at, but reaches out to Neil’s unfinished coffee and chugs it down in one sip all the same. “This coffee is awful,” Kevin complains.

And if there’s something Andrew and him have in common, it’s complaining. “Despicable,” Andrew agrees. “Must be German.”

“Must be,” Kevin hums, voice hoarse. He rakes his gaze over the table for a second before begrudgingly grabbing the rest of Andrew’s pancakes, unbothered by his clear robbery. Andrew thought chocolate chips would be enough to warn him off, but turns out Kevin is too far gone to care today. Whatever nightmares he had last night must have not been easy to shoulder. “These are awful too. How can you eat this?”

Andrew shrugs. “With practice.”

“With practice,” Kevin mimics in a mocking tone. His sourness is… Familiar; good. Andrew sinks into it and allows it to consume him, because in a house where everything has changed, Kevin still manages to be as much of a nuisance as he always is. “The guest room is a nightmare.”

Andrew doesn’t ask why — he knows why. The guest room was the place Kevin slept in after last year’s Thanksgiving, and though it feels odd to acknowledge, that must not have been easy for him. It was the first night he spent away from Andrew in a long time; that night. “Switch rooms, then,” Andrew tells him, nonplussed.

“And sleep with _who?_ Erik?” Kevin complains, slowly coming awake. He runs a hand through his hair, shooting a bitter look to where Neil helped Nicholas organize the cabinets. It was misplaced hatred, but Kevin was a bit more like Andrew than he was like them — he had no regard for whatever domesticity had settled into the house. He didn’t know what domesticity was like in the first place. “He’s going to fucking braid my hair while I’m sleeping.”

At that, Andrew suppressed a snort. He could always count on Kevin to make things worse. “As a courtesy,” Andrew adds. It’s a poor attempt at a joke, but it came off as harshly as a critic. He wouldn’t stand Erik’s kindness for much longer; at least not like he knew Neil, as welcoming to warmth as he is, would. Kevin and Andrew were, to put it simply, the only two monsters under this roof right now. If Aaron was here, they’d be three.

“As a _courtesy,_ Andrew,” he huffed in displeasance. This is not quite the bonding Betsy had wanted them to have, but it’s some sort of bonding anyways. “This is making me sick.”

Kevin, who was bitter like him. Kevin, who never had anyone watch over his cradle like Erik, Nicky and — to some extent — Neil did. Kevin, who despised this domesticity as much as Andrew did because he knew he would never be able to have it. Kevin, whom Andrew had woken up just to hear the familiarity of his complaints. Andrew thought he’d be sick. “Stop looking,” he answers, tone flat.

“Give me something else to look at,” Kevin replies, sour like a lemon.

The bickering eased the tension in Andrew’s shoulders. “Fuck you.”

Kevin rolled his eyes. “Fuck _you_. Pass me the butter.”

Andrew reaches out to the butter and throws it on the ground beside Kevin. _Be proud, Bee._

**iv.**

“Nicholas and his boyfriend are roping you into their weird domesticity,” Andrew offhandedly comments as Neil walks out of the bathroom, his hair wet and his face flushed due to the aggressively warm showers he always takes nowadays. “And you’re letting them.”

Neil offers him an unimpressed glance, drying off his hair. “I did not risk getting hamstrung in Baltimore to live miserably now.”

“So self-preserving all of a sudden.”

He shrugs. “Does it bother you?”

Andrew straightens up in the bed, resting his back against the headboard. “No,” he eventually answers, staring off into the opposite side of the room as Neil squeezes into a shirt. “I’m more surprised that you’re playing along with them.”

Neil shrugs again, sitting at the end of the bed while he puts on his socks, his back given to Andrew so easily, with so much trust. “They’re good people,” he reasons, voice neutral enough for Andrew to know he genuinely believes it, “and I’ve never really had good memories in this house. Why not make some?”

He purses his lips, echoing Neil’s words, “Why not?”

“Does it bother you that you don’t have my attention anytime you want it?” Neil pokes at him with a slight quirk of his lips, turning to face Andrew with his knees pulled to his chest. “Is that your problem?”

“I don’t want anything.”

Neil raises an eyebrow. “You want nothing.”

“We’re not doing this again,” Andrew tells him, sliding out of the bed. Neil reaches for his wrist, but doesn’t touch — his hand stays a calculated distance from Andrew’s skin, a quiet request to stay.

Andrew stays.

He hates Neil. He leans back against the headboard just as Neil pulls his hand back.

“You could make some good memories, too,” he murmurs, insistent and beautiful enough for the words to not make any sense in Andrew’s fogged brain. “There is nothing in the way now.”

Wrong. There is Andrew in the way. “I don’t want to.”

“Then you might as well die,” Neil tells him matter-of-factly, objective even if the words make a small shudder cut through his figure, curt but powerful, “if you’re planning to be miserable your whole life.”

“That is the plan.”

“ _Andrew._ ”

“Abram.”

“I know you’ve enjoyed yourself this summer,” he points out, not leaving room for Andrew to disagree. “I know you had fun. I know life isn’t boring you to death anymore; I see it.”

It’s true, but it’s irrelevant — amusement never lasts. “It’ll pass,” Andrew insists, almost meekly, almost halfheartedly, definitely pathetically, “you see nothing. You’re projecting things onto me, and fuck you for that.”

“You know I’m right,” Neil tells him, level headed like he knew he was right and would argue on it for the entire night if he had to. There is no winning any discussion with Neil when he’s like this. "It wouldn’t bother you if you didn’t know I’m right.”

“It doesn’t bother me.”

“Let go of your armbands, then.”

Andrew hadn’t realized his hand had been protectively hovering over the business end of one of his knives. Neil flinches almost imperceptibly at it, never too fond of knives in the first place, and Andrew slowly puts his hand away. He knows Neil knows, objectively, that Andrew would sooner use them to slash his own throat than Neil’s, but trauma lives in the subconscious. Andrew makes a note to empty out his armbands before bed tonight. “It still doesn’t mean anything,” he says at last.

“If that’s what helps you sleep at night,” Neil concedes, “but you’re wrong. You’re not as smart as you think you are if you can’t see it.”

He is not even slightly as smart as he thinks he is. Andrew doesn’t answer.

“I like that you’re having fun,” Neil confesses after a second, almost shyly, “I notice it because I like it. I want you to live well, Andrew.”

“You’re an idiot is what you are.”

“Yes,” he agrees easily.

“I’m going to kill you one day.”

“I’ll take you with me.”

Andrew closes his eyes in annoyance. “I hate you.”

“Do it at the dinner table,” Neil replies, slipping out of the bed with half a smile splattered over his face. He stretches his arms, movements dragged and pleased like a cat’s. “Nicky is teaching me how to make tamales and we’ll need someone to chop the onions.”

“Ask Erik,” Andrew answers, nonplussed.

“Erik will be making the dough.”

“Kevin.”

“Kevin is busy obsessively fidgeting with a stress ball.”

Andrew huffs. “ _Fine.”_

Neil slips out of the room, and Andrew follows. Things have been quite like that, lately.

The rest of the house is just like Neil said it would be, with the addition of Nicholas trying to set up the old radio — Erik is separating store bought dried corn husks by one side of the table as Kevin almost pops his stress ball with how strongly he’s handling it by the other, the look on his face showing that he wished for no one to talk to or touch him until he’s out of whatever mindspace he got himself into. It’s so… Peaceful, in a way; the rain taps against the window, quiet and insistant, and it would be summer for long enough for Andrew to pull himself together.

Nicholas gets Neil to work as soon as possible, shoving rubber gloves on his chest and pushing him towards a pile of chile pods whose stems and seeds still need cutting. He raises an eyebrow in Andrew’s direction, questioning, to which Andrew shrugs. Nicholas must have understood it, because he motions towards the kitchen with a dip of his chin, and Andrew, despite his plan of avoiding Nicholas for the entire trip, follows.

“They’ll be vegetarian, just so you know,” Nicholas informs him as he moves around the kitchen distractedly, pulling vegetable mixes from the fridge and a can of black beans. He settles them both on the counter, resting his palms over the canned tops and instructing, “These are refried beans, they’re precooked but it’d be better to rinse them and add some more flavor. You can just roast vegetables while I make the salsa, how’s that sound? Do you want me to call Neil in to help you? He’s not doing anything important.”

Andrew could cook well enough on his own, given Nicholas had taught him the basics of cooking long before he did to Neil, but he nodded anyway. Neil was inconvenient, but interesting — he’d run off his mouth and Andrew would listen to it along with the fizzling of the pan, relaxed in ways he hasn’t been since… Well, since childhood, maybe.

They work efficiently with the hum of the radio muffled from the living room, their separated tasks coming together to create another batch of instructions from Nicholas, everything from how to tie in the corn husk to which toppings he thought each of them would like based on his assumptions about their tastes. Andrew quietly wrapped corn husks around masa harina and pushed them aside for Neil to fill them in, who pushed them aside afterwards for Erik to tie them up and place them in the strainer for Nicholas to steam, four low maintenance machines working in perfect harmony. If family could be chosen, in one way or another, Andrew thinks this would be his.

Kevin joins them at the table, but says or does nothing, sticking to the little space between Andrew and the end of the table like he would be instructed to a year ago, an habit he hasn’t let go of yet even if there’s not much Andrew can protect him from now. A singer Andrew doesn’t know hums a song that is simultaneously pleasant and forgettable; slips right past him, dissipating in the air. What’s left of the scene after it’s over is the smell of food on his hands and the unrelenting feeling of peace, his violent heart a parked car whose battery is slowly coming to a halt. How long has it been since his hands have made something like this?

That is something Betsy has been trying to talk him into believing, lately. The strength in kind hands, the abundance of violence becoming something more akin to resilience, tenacity; a withering flower still pushing through concrete despite how many times it has been stomped on. _There is a lot of toughness in softening up,_ she said, as if it was an unquestionable fact, no room for disagreement in her tone. _You’d be surprised at how expensive kindness is, and the lengths people go through to avoid it._

Andrew’s gaze lingers over Nicholas’ hand for a second, insensitive and dead against the heat of the pan as he created knots around his fingers, finishing off the ones Erik hadn’t done right. He doesn’t scold Erik for it; doesn’t lash out against the clear lack of skill; only cleans up whatever mistakes have been left and leaves the tamales to steam, quite as if the food didn’t matter as much as the presence of all four of them at the table did, silent and working side by side. Andrew thinks of a poem about men whose hands are softened by salt and olive, calloused but good, pure, and the dream bread they make even in their sleep, endearingly automatic in the way only familiarity can teach them to be. With a few more tries, he thinks he could make tamales even in his sleep, too.

It’s true that Andrew did not live through so many horrors to simply revel in misery now; though misery would forever be with him, in one way or another. Grief is not a gauze you can peel back, a bruise that heals with time, a glass you can smash and make new. It would forever be sitting at the same table as Andrew, warm and alive, but it would soften with time — after one too many wine glasses, calloused hands, salty waters, olive oil and lemon juice drizzled over, soft pillows and downy sheets. The world will be made anew through Andrew’s resilience once again, though this time he wishes for the story to be softer; gentler. This time there will be so much kindness he’d be drowning in it, to make up for the starving, scrawny child that was not.

Bee would call this progress. Andrew, for now, settles for calling it spite.

**v.**

At some point, be it by Nicholas’ stubborn nature or Andrew’s faulty attempts at avoiding him, they end up alone in the front porch, the evening moon leading a downpour of night shadows into the creaking wood beneath Andrew’s feet and making Nicholas’ brown skin blue in the moonlight. It is so silent Andrew can almost pretend time hasn’t passed at all — he is sixteen years old and he had just moved into his first good home with a cousin he never met before and Aaron, who seemed no more happy about it than Andrew himself did, though it was noticeable how healthier he looked away from Tilda’s heavy hands.

Nicholas had been skinny and lanky, then — he looked like he didn't have it in himself to handle them both, and Andrew saw their inevitable tragic end before they had even started, Nicholas’ freshly cut hair pulled into a lousy bun and a weak smile adorning his sunken in cheekbones. When Nicholas lasted them a month, Andrew was surprised; when he started taking them to dentist appointments and encouraging them to choose what they wanted from the grocery store, Andrew knew they would last for as long as Nicholas would have them. And they had lasted. And they will continue to last, or so Betsy likes to tell him.

They’re sitting side by side, Andrew’s feet propped up over the white fence and Nicholas’ elbow leaning against the armrest of his chair. How easy would it be to just be sixteen again, cutting up coupons for what he wanted Nicholas to bring him from the supermarket and pretending he didn’t need glasses for the sake of Aaron — how sweet would adolescence feel all over again, back when Andrew still had the chance to make something out of himself.

He stares. Nicholas looks nothing like him and they don’t look like family, not in the way Andrew and Aaron do. They share one or two physical traits, an infinity of quirks and habits Andrew doesn’t know how he picked up, and a house. They share two languages; an Exy team; a sexuality; being vegetarian. The way they wash dishes — rinse, soap, rinse again, to the tune of an old Mexican song. Care for Aaron. Checking the door to make sure it’s locked. Being orphans — whether by choice or not.

How fun life would have been if it was Nicholas all along, and not the thirteen families Andrew had before him.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to tell me,” Nicholas eventually hums, eyes following a passing car with drowsy interest, “and I understand if it’s the last straw to make you finally kill me. But…” He sighs. “Why didn’t you tell me, Andrew?”

“Tell what?” Andrew asks, but he knows well enough.

“You know what,” his cousin says, kind — or pitiful — enough to refuse Drake’s name in Andrew’s presence.

He shrugs. “I didn’t think you’d believe me.”

A moment of silence, thin and tangly like Andrew’s veins, red and blue under pale skin. Nicholas refuses to meet his eye. “I would have believed you.”

A heartbeat. Andrew taps his fingers against his armband. “I know.”

He knew. At the time, he liked to imagine that Nicholas would be the one to help him press charges against Drake Spears, in a world where Cass would realize her mistake and take him back under her wing, and that Andrew would’ve had the luck of seeing Drake go, head held down and handcuffed, to rot somewhere far, far away from him and his family. They were adolescent delusions, as fictional as they could come, but in a world where Andrew was allowed to go anywhere higher than the rock bottom, they would have happened. The things that would’ve been different, then. The life Andrew could have had.

A pang in his chest. "Is that why you didn't want to get tested?" Nicholas asks quietly, his muscles uncharacteristically rigid and reserved. He leans his forearms against the fence and his chin over the back of his hand, staring out at the empty neighborhood, and Andrew realizes this is his way of giving him privacy; of freeing him from the pressure of schooling his expression into something more guarded, more apathetic.

When Aaron had successfully sneaked around Andrew's back and gotten caught with his first highschool girlfriend, Nicholas had pulled them aside to give them a long, embarrassing conversation about sexual protection and consent, instructing the both of them to get regularly tested even if they hadn't been doing anything serious yet. It had been fleeting and only slightly triggering for Andrew, but the next morning Nicholas had told them they'd be getting tested at their next checkup at the doctor.

Andrew had been so mortified with it, he turned to raising hell in their household — along with locking them inside the house and smashing windows, tires, plates and glasses, he made sure to be clear in his refusal to get tested, threatening to run away before Nicholas could even notice he was gone. He gave into Andrew's wishes, of course, but took Aaron with him anyways, who did not refuse as violently as Andrew did. Andrew had waited for their results with them.

There seems to be no reason to lie about it, so Andrew agrees, "Yes."

Nicholas lets out a somewhat shakier breath, the yet-to-be nightlights reflecting the glossiness of his eyes. Andrew knows that look, because he's seen it in Neil and Aaron before — it tells him that the sweet, sweet knife of impotence has been turning inside Nicholas' stomach for longer than Andrew would have guessed. "Did you ever get tested at all?" he asks, the shakiness easing out into stunned numbness, velvety to the touch.

"Yes," Andrew repeats. This feels like a dangerous topic to venture in, but Andrew can hold his own ground if Nicholas tries to pry any further.

For now, though — everything he's asked was out of concern, and though Andrew doesn't understand it, he can respect it.

"I'm sorry," Nicholas eventually says after a too long stretch of silence, the treacherous ways of time dimming at last when night breeze brushes against Andrew's face, the taste of the peach crumble he had for lunch clawing at the back of his throat. "I should've done more."

Andrew raises an eyebrow, but doesn't bother with the scoff he had wanted to offer. "You could not have known I existed at the time."

Nicholas motions dismissively without ever bringing his eyes to Andrew's figure. "I was your guardian, Andrew, and I didn't _realize._ I didn't know. I should have."

"You weren't exactly prepared for it."

"I should have been."

"How would you?" Andrew asks, flatly. Nicholas’ stubbornness wears him out to a point of no return. "And what would you have done? Sent me to therapy a year before? I don't think that would've made any difference."

"I don't _know,_ Andrew," Nicholas snaps, though he doesn't sound as angry as he does exhausted, "I could have pressed charges. I could have made sure you'd never have to see that man, Cass or Luther ever again. I could have protected you more."

Andrew grits his teeth. "Let it _go._ I didn't need your protection then, I don't need it now."

"I don't care!" he exclaims, finally pushing back from his spot at the fence and turning to Andrew with a violent shudder and a finger pointed in his direction. "You were a _child._ You were _sixteen years old_. You were in _highschool._ You don't get to tell me you weren't worth protecting."

"I was not."

Nicholas closes his eyes for a moment, willing his frustration to easen, before staring straight into Andrew's face: "Andrew, you were a child. A child I loved. A child I wanted. A child I moved all the way from Germany for. I would have burned the Spear household to the ground if I knew, and it would not have been enough."

Andrew sets his mouth into a bitter, thin line, grim like a ghost. "There is no such thing," he says, the words long and vicious around his tongue, "as loving me."

Nicholas studies him for a long minute, eyes round and widened in barely contained surprise. The porch is at sudden too quiet, too badly illuminated, and the hollow sound of far away cicadas is the only thing keeping Andrew in the present. “Andrew,” he starts after a few moments of hesitantly opening and closing his mouth, voice softer and more timid than Andrew ever remembers it being as he regains his balance, “I don’t… Not love you. I was — I _am_ amazed by you. I am amazed by how much you’ve endured and how you can go on living — and you _do_! Everyday! Woah! — even after… Indescribable loss. You are bewildering to me. When I see you showing a glimpse of a smile, or with Neil, or playing, I am in love and I want to know, _how?_ Because you are amazing to me.” Nicholas takes a short pause, choosing his words carefully though he is out of breath and has been for a while. “You were my child. You are my cousin. I would have done everything I could for you then, and I would do it now.”

Andrew doesn’t stare. Doesn’t answer. Doesn’t exist. The shadow casting over Nicholas’ face is of a deep, deep purple — the aftermath of violet hour made in the image of a bruise —, and the world is nothing but a tired sigh dragged out of ragged lungs. He doesn’t know if there’s anything he could say or do that would make him as much as slightly worth those words — he doesn’t know if there’s any way he could ever be even with Nicholas after everything he’s done, from leaving Germany to dust in a shelf to trailing behind Andrew for the past four years or so like a shadow. “You should’ve stayed in Stuttgart,” he answers at last, through gritted teeth, “you should have left me and Aaron to rot when you had the chance.”

“Don’t say that,” Nicholas protests, a sharp tinge of something alike to anger in his tone, though it is not the fury Andrew knows. ‘Tis not a dry, burnt-out red; instead, it’s an overwhelming blue, so dark it could be black on the wrong hands. It is pointed, but not at Andrew — at the world. It felt sheltering in a way an older man’s rage has never felt before. “Don’t say these things. You don’t get to say them! You can say any mean thing you want, but you can’t say that! Not to me! I would have done it a hundred times over if I had to.”

Andrew hated him so, so much. Before he can even gather himself enough to formulate an answer to such absurdities, Nicholas gentles considerably, humming, “I don’t care if you’ll never say it back. If you think I’m too hard to manage, that’s fine, I respect it, but I’m not leaving. You can give me how many reasons to leave you’d like!” — a pause — “I’m still staying. You will only ever see me leaving you in a body bag.”

“Don’t give me ideas,” he deadpans, ruthlessly pushing down every other feeling that might’ve come from the words ‘ _I’m not leaving’_. Andrew would be forced to remember these words for eternity; there is no running from them in this lifetime. He refuses to analyze how they make him feel at this very moment, though, and thus deems them a problem for future Andrew to dwell on.

Nicholas observes him for a moment before he bursts into somewhat watery laughter, the sheer strength of it easing out the tension of his shoulders and, by proxy, of Andrew’s too. “Send my ashes to Erik.”

Andrew scowls. “I won’t.”

“Snort them, then. Do a line over a stripper’s six pack for me.”

“I hate you.”

Nicholas smiles. “That’s okay. I love you too."

He gets up and leaves. Andrew can’t help but think that Nicholas should cover his own ears before he speaks of such devious things. At some point, this unshakable optimism of his will become obscene, lewd, ostentatiously self-deceiving — rated for viewers with the strongest of stomachs and the smallest of sensibilities, for those who truly seek to look straight into the sickest, most unrelenting side of mankind. How dare he look at Andrew and see whatever goodness he sees in Aaron, in Neil, in Kevin, in Erik. How dared this man not get up and leave when he had the chance.

In the end, Andrew thinks he sort of likes it, if only because Nicholas’ endurance is his noblest — and most entertaining — feature, along with his instigating tendencies and his crooked Cheshire grin, it being a ghost of Andrew’s own.

He smokes three cigarettes in the backyard before going back into the house. Perhaps Andrew was too quick to make a judgement — this place doesn’t need to be burnt down to its ashes; it just needs a new coat of paint.

They repeat it the next evening, nothing but their positions having changed — this time Nicholas sat in Andrew’s chair, and Andrew leaned against the fence from the outside, a bowl of ice cream on his hands rather than a cigarette. It’s a summer night like all other summer nights, though perhaps a little windier than the day before, no more fairer than yesterday. The cluster of stars above their heads told Andrew tomorrow would be just as sunny as today was, if not more, and the cicadas still belted their shanties from somewhere far, far away, invisible to the eye but insistent to the ear. It was a gentle hum in the night; the electronics in the house buzzed with life. Erik had been trying to teach Neil how to install the Xbox, and they’ve been at it for the past two hours, equally confused.

Nicholas stared out at the neighborhood like he did yesterday, though now fidgeting with his abhorrently colorful bracelet, a rainbow of different pieces of yarn adorning his thin wrists. His hands were nothing like Andrew’s, but were somewhat alike to Neil’s — slender fingers with pianist-like delicacy, tapping a tune against his bracelet and the skin around it. Andrew didn’t know what song he was humming in his head to the tapping of his fingers, but supposes it must’ve been something of the gospel realm, considering Nicholas had learned the piano as a child to play at church. How deeply scarred the children of Jesus Christ are; how many years will it take for Nicholas to wash out all of those memories.

Andrew’s spoon clashes against the glass bowl. It is so very silent, which is unusual for Nicholas. Andrew finds it unnerving, but not enough to break the quiet.

Kevin was a few blocks away from them, practicing at the neighborhood court like they expected him to be. Andrew felt the urge to trail after him the moment he saw Kevin leaving, but eventually smothered the feeling away, deeming this suburban wasteland to be safe enough for Kevin to roam around unchecked. He’d be back for dinner soon, and then would drag Neil down to the court, mumbling about poor structures and goals that don’t light up when a ball is slammed into them. It’s a routine, and Andrew liked routines. They made the day easier to seize.

Nicholas was, of course, the first to break the silence. Andrew was somewhat thankful for it — he was so uncharacteristically quiet and unmoving, it felt like Thanksgiving all over again. “Aaron called,” he says, dragging his nail through the skin of his thumb. “Asked if you’ve killed me yet.”

Andrew schools his features into placidity. “You’re alive, aren’t you?”

“For now,” Nicholas hums, a short-lived attempt at humor. He fidgets some more with the bracelet, hooking his finger under it, and utters, “He asked if you’re okay. Not with those words, but you know how he is. It was more of a grunt.”

Andrew purses his lips, unsure of what to make out of that comment. “He heard about Luther,” he deduces, stirring his halfway melted ice cream.

Nicholas shrugs almost imperceptibly, movements with way less flare than Andrew is used to them having. “I had to tell him. If Luther dies, it’ll affect his trial.”

 _Luther._ Not _my dad,_ or anything of the sort. Nicholas is either feigning or attempting apathy, and Andrew wonders if he picked it up from Neil. “It’ll be one less witness,” Andrew eventually points out, unhelpful as he is.

“Yeah,” Nicholas limits himself to agreeing, rubbing at his elbows after a particularly chilly breeze cuts through the summer heat. “It’ll be just Maria. She might deny our claims if Luther isn’t there to defend himself.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Andrew pushes around a chunky bit of vanilla. “Waterhouse said he has everything he needs. The kit came back positive.”

Nicholas flinches violently at his words, curling into himself as if the simple uttering of them caused him great pain. Andrew understood the feeling, but did not relate or condone it. It had happened; to pretend it hadn’t would be counterproductive. Plus, Andrew had consented to the examination — he hated every moment and even thinking of it still made any touching feel impossible, but it was probably what would keep Aaron from getting locked up, and the evidence needed to guarantee at least a small fee from the Spear family. “Will you talk to her?” Andrew asks, cutting through the sudden tension. He doesn’t quite care, but he’d like to hear Nicholas reject his parents once more, if only to clench Andrew’s doubts of whether he’d ever talk to his mother again.

“No,” Nicholas declares after a second, firm like he believed it himself, “why would I?”

“Why would you?” Andrew echoes.

His shoulders slump. “I’ll get her charged if it comes to it. She’d been an accomplice.”

Andrew shakes his head in disdain, grasping at the edges of his bowl a little harder. “Wouldn’t be able to prove it. I doubt she knew.”

“Luther wouldn’t have hidden it from her if it meant a chance at talking bad about you,” he spits, the words sounding no more gentler than his full-bodied flinch. Andrew wonders how much sensibility could have possibly lasted Nicholas after everything he’s seen and been through. “I visited their church. The rumor spread; they don’t go there anymore.”

A prickle of satisfaction cuts through his skin, warm and pleasurable. Luther and Maria had been exiled from their one place of power, then; how lovely life can sometimes be. “How scandalous,” he comments, not a bit of remorse settling into him. Luther had broken his promise of not allowing Cass Spear to foster any more kids, and — if it does exist, though Andrew leans towards the opposite view — would burn in the depths of Hell were he to die tomorrow.

Nicholas hums in agreement, not looking as if he felt strongly towards anything. He was a great actor. “I asked around. The Spears lost their house, apparently. Waterhouse said the government is cutting down on aid for military families.”

It makes sense, of course — Cass had been a stay-at-home mom, and Richard lived on the financial aid he and Drake both received. They were relatively poor, but stable enough; if Andrew had stayed with them, he would’ve had to join the military instead of going to college. The thought alone makes him shiver. “Why are you telling me this?” he asks, unimpressed.

“Karma, I guess,” Nicholas shrugged. The tension on his shoulders gave away how fake his nonchalance was, but he was trying nonetheless. “They’re unlikely to win the case. It’s a dead end. They’ll never recover from the financial damage; neither the Spears nor my parents.”

There was an edge of satisfaction to his voice — something stubborn and fierce, underlying the faked nonchalance and showing that Nicholas, ever the instigator, had gotten himself in fighting trim to make sure the Spears never recovered from the harm they’d done and let happen. _I would have burned the Spear household to the ground if I knew, and it would not have been enough,_ he said yesterday. Andrew quietly wonders how things could’ve turned out if he’d told Nicholas about Drake before, but it felt foolish enough for him to chase the thought away.

Nicholas did not believe in cruelty, Andrew knew. He was kind in a way that did not come any easier than it came to Renee, though Erik had softened him up over the years, enough for the jagged edges to not show. He, himself, had never gotten any so-called justice for the things he’d been put through — the four men who tried to beat the gay out of him were not charged on the grounds that Andrew had gone too far in his defense, and he couldn’t do anything about having been sent to a conversion camp, given they were legal in South Carolina. Nicholas would never be able to gain any reparations from it.

Andrew didn’t know anything about conversion camps. He never asked, and as far as he knew, Nicholas never talked about it. He envied the secrecy Nicholas could afford to have towards it — Andrew would never be able to pretend Drake didn’t happen after last November. Maybe that’s why he finds himself asking; not to be cruel, but because he had unwillingly shared so much of his own trauma that it felt unjustful for it to be so one sided. “How was it,” he says, tone unwavering in its apathy, “when they sent you to camp?”

He expected Nicholas to flinch; to pull away; to have his eyes water; to whimper. None of it happens.

Andrew steals a glance at him, and surely enough Nicholas had freezed in his spot, though his eyes pertained to the neighborhood still, softened by their sudden death of character. It wasn’t the white noise Andrew had in his eyes when he slipped into numbness; it was something a bit more refined that had matured over the years. The retreating from emotion meant protection to Andrew, but it must mean something completely different to Nicholas, who looked above all ashamed. Discomfort piled up in Andrew’s stomach like scalding hot lava. “What do you need to know?” Nicholas asks, absolved from anything but shame.

He knew that look very well. It was the look of someone who believed they belonged under the crushing weight of a boot, never able to climb anywhere higher than rock bottom. _Hello, cousin,_ recognition chimed within Andrew. This violent shame of Nicholas’ is a neighborhood, and everyone Andrew loves lives in it; neither him or they have ever left.

Andrew recognizes that look from each time Nicholas had made a joke about his sexuality before, tampering over his real feelings with the bitter relief of comedy. _If someone laughs, then it’s funny, see? Then it doesn’t hurt, see? Then it is sealed and unable to hurt me anymore, see?_ — it was pathetic, and he knew it very dearly. When it becomes a joke, it freezes the story at its peaceful peak, so Nicholas doesn’t have to acknowledge the violent climax that comes after the joke was made, the part where he gets beaten, abused and groomed into heterosexuality. "Anything real," Andrew answers.

When self deprecation comes from someone who already exists within the margins, it sends out a message; it says that he'll only be allowed to speak if he's putting himself down for it. It’s not humility — it’s humiliation.

“It was how I imagine rehabilitation to be,” Nicholas starts at last, now fidgeting so hard Andrew had to move his glance away from his hands. “We had group therapy sessions. My group was the smallest because we were the youngest — two lesbians and three gay men, one of them trans. They’d reprimand us for using Lucas’ name. We were encouraged to call him a she, and punished for the contrary.” He takes a moment to cringe at his words, a full-body shudder cutting through his frame. “Group therapy wasn’t as bad, because we had each other, and though we were always being watched, we managed to communicate through code. I couldn’t speak Spanish, see, because it meant keeping secrets from their staff. We used colors, then.”

Andrew breathes in and out, patiently waiting for Nicholas to continue. “I was purple, Lucas was blue, Hannah was black, and I can’t remember the others. I think the girls had something for each other, but I can’t remember if we managed to sneak that into conversation. It was tolerable; group therapy. We had it better than the adults’ group.”

Nicholas takes a long, dragged sigh. Andrew pretends he doesn’t notice the shaking of his hands out of respect. “I had two individual therapists. One was a priest, the other a licensed psychologist. The psychologist was heavy handed, but otherwise kind — she’d give me nauseating pills and show me pictures of men until my associations were tainted enough for me to never want one again.” At that, Andrew tenses up — he knew a thing or two about tainted associations. Nicholas doesn’t comment on it, instead continuing, “The priest was crueler. He’d have me transcribing Bible verses the entire afternoon, until my hands couldn’t take it anymore. I got punished a lot more than the others; it was hard for me to switch to the wrong pronouns when talking to Lucas. I always forgot.”

“We weren’t allowed to talk to the adults. They weren’t allowed to even look at us sometimes, but we were used to guilt trip them. Lesbian women would be forced to look straight into us and apologize to the priests for not wanting children; the gay men were convinced that their attraction would lead to… You know,” he shivers noticeably. “It wasn’t the end of the world, Andrew, but it was shitty. I don’t know why you’d want to know about that.”

“You never talk about it,” Andrew impassively says, though something shifted behind his detachment, where no one could see. A lot of things started to make sense, then — the way Nicholas would frightenedly pull away from alcohol if he felt even slightly nauseated, how he knew Bible verses verbatim despite having poor memory, his unnoticed refusal towards therapy.

Nicholas shudders again, though he was not recalling it out loud anymore. The way his eyes slackened from reality at the flood of memories reminded Andrew too much of his own. “There is a reason I never talk about it. You and Aaron were too young to understand, then.”

“We would have understood.” Andrew offers him a cold glance.

“Maybe,” he hums, crestfallen, “but I was your caretaker, and not the opposite. You two were supposed to lean on _me,_ not me on you. There was no point in bringing it up.”

“You were suicidal,” Andrew accuses, furrowing his eyebrows at the realization. “Our pill cabinet was locked. You never told us.”

Nicholas motions dismissively. “You were teenagers dealing with your own problems. I was an adult. It would’ve been shitty of me to push that into you.”

“Nicholas.”

“Andrew.”

“ _Why didn’t you tell us?_ ” he punctuates every word with a stronger grit of his teeth.

“Andrew, that’s enough,” Nicholas reprimanded half-heartedly, curling into himself at the mere sight of disapproval. Andrew realizes his mistake too late to take it back — these memories are too fresh, too delicate; any man’s anger would be enough to make Nicholas spiral into blind fear right now. Nicholas’ voice shakes slightly: “Stop. That’s enough.”

A prickle of guilt; unfamiliar and inconvenient. Andrew wills his irritation to go away, and says, this time gentler of words, “Tell me. It’s only fair. I told you my reason to not have told you about Drake.” His voice comes out so childish Andrew has to fight the urge to wince.

His words ensue a moment of silence. Nicholas considers him with a tired sigh, but abides by his wish eventually, cradling his own chin and stroking with his thumb in a self-soothing manner, like Andrew had seen Erik do to him before. “I was ashamed, Andrew, okay?” he mutters, “I thought I deserved it. I thought you two would say I deserved it. I mean — you _know_ Aaron is not the most supportive. I didn’t want to know what you two thought of it because I was scared you’d agree with my parents. Is that enough for you or do you need me to start crying, too?”

Andrew sucks in a breath, baffled. “You are so stupid.”

“I know.”

“I would have beaten Aaron into a pulp if he agreed with this nonsense.”

“I know that now, Andrew,” Nicholas sighs, not looking any bit happier by Andrew’s blatant expression of care, “but I didn’t know then, and I wouldn’t want you to hurt Aaron because he is our family and I love him. You are an adult now; that is the only reason I told you this. Aaron doesn’t know but I would tell him if he asked.”

Andrew blinks, taken aback. “I don’t understand.”

“There is nothing to understand,” he replies, seemingly sobering up despite the ever present tremble of his hand. It reminds Andrew too much of his bad leg — the random spasms and the memories that came with it. “I told you before I don’t need you to fix things with your fists for me. You’ve already done that enough with Kevin and Aaron. I told you years ago I would not strike a deal with you, and I haven’t changed my mind.”

“Then why would you tell me this?”

Nicholas leans back against his chair. “Because you asked.”

“What did you gain from answering it?” Andrew insists, the confusion seeping into frustration, “I can’t do anything for you.”

“I know.” He crosses his arms, hiding the trembling hand from Andrew’s watch. “I don’t want you to do anything for me. It’s not always a transaction, Andrew.”

He frowns, gripping the fence until his knuckles turn white but refusing to stare into Nicholas’ face, as it felt too… Shameful. There is nothing Andrew could do for him, and there was nothing he could’ve done then — it settles so wrongfully in his stomach Andrew might just throw up. “It is for me.”

“What do you want me to tell you?” Nicholas asks, voice tense and above all extremely worn out; like a dwelling down cardigan. “I’m fine. I’m twenty four years old, I have a boyfriend and a family and a team that I love. I get to graduate and watch you and Aaron heal. My team just won our first trophy. You are safe from Drake forever. There is no reason to bring all of this up again when it’s so far in the past, especially when for _once_ the present is good and the future is looking up.”

Andrew presses his lips into a thin line. _I get to watch you and Aaron heal; you are safe from Drake forever._ These are things Nicholas describes as a reason for his own particular happiness. “I don’t understand you,” he says. But Andrew — how ironic — wants to. He wants to make that out of himself.

Neil’s words ring on his mind. _I want to be the person that comes back for you._

Nicholas shrugs. Andrew would be up all night thinking of this, but for now he allows the memory to dwindle down like a ghost, the fleeting breeze taking it away to a place where it couldn’t hurt them anymore.

It comes back to this; usually.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you noticed any homoeroticness in andrew and kevin i want you to consider that i am writing this based solely on canon so if it seems gay its because it very much is

**Author's Note:**

> yeah i know. i know. yeah. don't worry i go to therapy for that
> 
> if you're reading this, please [support black protesters and educate yourself on black lives matter!](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WUJUAQs_vMDixJAWRMONwyvfdEcPvSFwX5_ExQhytDg/edit?usp=drivesdk)
> 
> my @ on twitter is jaemkitty but i should warn you beforehand that i am a kpop stan. yes. i know. i too have no idea what a nice kid like me is doing in a place like this. if you use tumblr, i'm rentedvalentine there :~)


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